The New Zealand Graphic AND LADIES’ JOURNAL. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1891.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 43, 24 October 1891, Page 512

The New Zealand Graphic AND LADIES’ JOURNAL. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1891.

At present there are wars and rumours of wars. Chili has just concluded her petty blood-letting, and reports of impending strife are now coming from the other side of the globe, where the map is thickly dotted with names pregnant of slaughter in the days that are no more. It is wonderful how coolly the human race accepts the idea of war. In nothing else is the force of habit and association of ideas more remarkable. Even a people like the Americans, who took their origin under conditions comparatively peaceful, and had not to consolidate themselves politically by successive wars as have the European States, could not get along without lighting somebody, so they first hatched out two diflieulties with their mother and then had a squabble among themselves. Three wars in a century is a very good record for a young Anglo-Saxon community ; but the history of the Spanish colonies of Central and South America far surpasses this. Their struggles to get free from Spain, and their repeated quarrels among themselves during the last seventy years have been characterised by a ruthless cruelty of which the branches of the English race have not been guilty towards each other, and show that states growing by colonization and not by conquest are capable of exhibiting traits of savagery which would not have been predicted.

In these colonies of Australasia we have only had the Maori War. This in point of destructiveness and brutality compared very favourably with the wars waged between European races and barbarians, and the effect of it for a variety of reasons has not materially influenced the colonial character. It was partial to the northern part of the North Island, it was waged chiefly with the imperial soldiery, and the feeling between the combatants was never embittered by contempt or by needless cruelty upon either side. The real effect of war upon the national character is to be perceived where the expectation of it is always imminent, as in France or Germany, or in the states along the Danube, where the probability of war is the absorbing topic of interest from the time one war ceases until the next begins. Indeed it is hard to imagine what peoples who as yet have not attained to the industrial and complicated stage in which we are living can have wherewith to beguile the tedium vitoe unless it be the prospect of a war. It is the supreme excitement of existence is that of killing one’s fellow creatures, and provided there is no immediate danger to themselves, every man and even every woman views war as a good sort of physic to prescribe unto their fellows. In these colonies there is probably less sensitiveness regarding the horrors of war than there is even in Europe. Here it seems to be regarded with a childish curiosity, as a thing difficult to realize, while yonder there is a sort of baneful fascination encircling the whole subject, as if of something lurid, horrible, and yet attractive.

M. Zola, the novelist, who cannot be accused of ignorance of the subject, as he has been saturating himself with material for a novel entitled ‘ War,’ proclaims war to be a great regenerator and purifier of mankind. This is an account of the self-denial it requires, and the enthusiasm for an idea which it creates. No civilized person now -a - days contends that the motive which sways modern armies is the desire of individual killing. War is every year becoming more a question of science in which the feeling of personal animosity is lost, and the glory gained is more and more collective. Indeed, it is growing to be more in the nature of an athletic pastime where the element of skill predominates. Either side would dispense with slaying its adversaries were there any other less harmful method by which victory could be achieved. In-

deed, the rules of international law laid down under the Convention of Geneva prohibit the employment of modes of destruction entailing useless suffering upon mankind, and which cannot influence the result. It seems, then, that a point is gradually being reached where the intervention of reason will become more easy than heretofore, and should modern science result in making wars impossible on account of their destructiveness, the folly of warfare will then become evident. There lias been a great ‘rot’ among the notabilities of the earth lately, some four or five prominent names having passed away from the page of current history. Four of the landmaiks of the oldest generation still survive—the Queen, Emperor Francis Joseph, Bismarck and Gladstone. Count Bismarck blossomed late in life, but for forty years the otherthree have been prominently in view of their fellows, and have seen more than two generations of celebrities pass away from off’ the stage of men. Of the heroes recently deceased none were of the first rank, and their reputation has been of comparatively recent growth. Rarely, unless a person is born into the class of the privileged, do they achieve prominence before the best of life has been spent, and great longevity is essential if the career of the hero is to be of long duration.

Hero worship seems to be essential to the existence of mankind. Newspapers, which with all their peculiarities reflect the propensities of human nature, do their best to minister to the inclination apparently ineradicable, of having somebody to talk about. With the growing rapidity of modern life, too, there seems to develop a greater-succession of popular heroes, and persons who a century ago would never have been heard of beyond their own little sphere or country obtain an extended reputation through the medium of the journals. Modern taste clearly is much more rapacious of details concerning those who emerge a little above the crowd of their fellows, and it has also a liking for novelty and a comprehensiveness much greater than that of the age of our great-grandparents.

The end of two or three of the lately deceased notabilities has not been such as to present the career of ambition in a very favourable light. General Boulanger, President Balmaceda, and Mr Parnell were none of them either full of years or full of honours when they took their exit from the earthly scene, and while they may have attracted a certain amount of wonder and attention, few will be inclined to envy them their career. In viewing the passage of such men as these across the stage of life one is disposed to ask themselves what pleasure or reward it was that they found in walking along such treacherous eminences ? Is it the love of power, which, rather than fame, forms the last infirmity of masterful minds, and that induces such to endure ? Rarely does the climber of the empyrean remain long under the delusion regarding the value of fame except in so far as it conduces to the acquisition of power. He knows that it is not native worth but eminence which constitutes fame, and that the possession of a certain power and position is the secret of popular admiration. When the former is lost the latter quickly follows, and then the reaction upon a full and feverish existence sets in, and the mind or constitution collapses. In seeing the end of such abortive ambition one realizes the old adage that tastes differ widely in this world, and while a restful existence suits some, a career full of excitement, worry, detraction, and disappointment is what others select and deliberately follow.

Horrible and incredible as it may seem to persons of the ‘ hard shell ’ type of mind, the day will probably arrive when women will take the initiative in certain things exactly in the same way as men do at present. The notion that the female sex should have the monopoly of the virtues of seclusiveness and passivity is one which has become ingrained like most other ideas by mere force of habit, and until twenty years ago was regarded with something akin to religious veneration. With people aforetime views on all topics, sacred or secular, were inherited much as were their garments. A traveller in the reign of George 11. from the west to the east of England, for a journey of two hundred miles constituted a traveller then, describes the inhabitants of S miersetshire as wearing the clothes and fashions of fifty years before. Just to dream of a woman of the present day even in these colonies appearing in the fashion of the year of Her Majesty’s accession or the costume of her grandmother ! Formerly such adherence to ancestral practices was ac-

counted not only regular and conventional but virtuous. The presumption of wisdom was always in favour of the old or the long established.

Now a-days, however, the tendency is rather in the other direction, and from being enthroned in pedagogic absolutism the antique is coming to be questioned and even put upon its trial for the mere reason that it has laid down the law so long. The subordination of women is one of these discredited theories, and seeing the length to which this doctrine has been pushed it is not surprising that women should revolt. The history of woman-kind when it has not been one of oppression has been one of enforced self-suppression. Self -control is a good principle, and reasonable enough. Society would be impossible without self-control, which is consideration for the rights or the convenience of our neighbour. But selfsuppression is something more than this. It means the crushing down of some aspiration the gratification of which would inflict no substantial injury upon anybody, and might even do the aspirant and the world some positive good. Such disability, too, has in the past been inflicted not merely upon women, but upon men as well. There being a sort of iron clad standard of male and female virtues, the two being drawn as wide as possible apart, every effort was made to dragoon boys into conforming to the one, and girls into conforming to the other.

The mistake lay in the belief that as between men and women the distinction of sex should be made the more marked by a fictitious creation of characteristics which were not necessarily innate. There is no necessary connection between a woman’s present conventional style of dress and mode of behaviour and her sex. The obligation of being as gentls and courteous as is consistent with the advancement of our interests in life applies as much to men as to women, and much of the progress in civilisation during recent years has been shown in the infusion of some of the softness peculiar to intercourse with women into the ordinaiy affairs of men. The obligation of women being attired in a manner which hampers the free and active use of the body is, on the other hand, not an essential custom, but a mere survival of a time when women’s office was sedentary and stay-at-home because it was unsafe for her to venture very far out-at-doors. The peculiarities of the sexual ideals were in fact the offsprings of a barbarous and imperfectly organised society which lias now almost disappeared.

Of similar origin are the partial and unjust customs cf men asking women to dance or to marry them. No good reason has ever been given for these except usage, which means nothing unless it is fortified by sense. They both savour so much of Orientalism and the slave-market that they should be abolished as soon as possible, and social intercourse put upon a perfectly just and natural footing. It is bad that a woman should not show her liking for a man either as a partner for one dance or as a companion for life. Society is the loser in every way, for much time is lost and many congenial partners in eitherlinenevercome together who would do so under the more sensible rule. Certainly a man’s vanity may get less rein by discovering that he is not acceptable toabsolutelyevery woman he meets,but this willbe more than equalised by the sense that he is appreciated in certain quarters he has never suspected. Perhaps men shun assuming the onus of refusing, but habit would accustom women to this, and the good sense and tact begotten of experience would tend to bring about a condition of things which to those who grew up therein would appear eminently natural and agreeable.