BRAVE BELGIUM

New Zealand Tablet, 3 December 1914, Page 25

BRAVE BELGIUM

DEAN BURKE’S EULOGY.

At an Irish national concert in aid of the Belgian fund, held at Invercargill on November 25, and referred to by our Invercargill correspondent in this issue, the Very Rev. Dean Burke spoke as follows:

The organisers have asked me to speak at this concert on some appropriate topic, and I gladly comply with their request. You saw in a cablegram in yesterday’s papers that Mr. Asquith, Mr. Balfour, and Lord Rosebery have published an appeal to patriotic organisations throughout the Empire to use favorable occasions to educate public opinion as to the causes and issues of the present war and as to the aims of the Allies in carrying it on. This appeal supplies me with my theme. The subject is a wide oneone demanding a long lecture for anything like adequate treatment. In the 20 minutes allotted to me I shall try to touch as clearly as may be on the causes and issues of the war. The immediate causes of the war were the quarrel between Servia and Austria, the murder of the Crown Prince, Francis Ferdinand, the exacting demands made by Austria on Servia, the pressure of the Austrian war party on the Austrian Emperor and of the German war party on the Kaiser, and the readiness of, you may say, the whole German people for war on any pretext. They wanted ‘ their place in the sun,’ as the Kaiser put it, and the last shining button had been sewed on the last coat of the last man in an army which, the Germans firmly believed, was able to gain that place in defiance of the world. Well, what led up to this state of things? What were the more remote or general causes of the war ? What had brought the Germanic peoples up to the point when they were eagerly looking for and toasting ‘ der Tag’ (the Day)? You must remember the German Empire is quite an upstart in the circle of the great Powers: it was only in 1871 that the Prussianised little kingdoms, duchies, and electorates of the Germanic peoples assumed the name of the German Empire. It was only in 1701 that a Prussian Duke ventured to call himself king. But those Prussian

kings ere men of blood and iron. .They were ‘ recruiting sergeants ’ mostly ; Avar was their trade, and preparation of war the principal industry of their little kingdom. They succeeded, naturally, in adding province to province, until they became the most powerful rulers among the Teutonic peoples of the continent. In 1785 Frederick the Great formed a Bund with himself as the centre or rallying point for princes and peoples from the Baltic to the Danube. Napoleon, see-

ing a danger for France in this Germanic confederacy, broke it up in 1808, at the same time smashing the power of the Prussians. Then for 50 years the House of*Brandenburg declined and the House of Austria, the Hapsburgs, was in the ascendant. However, about 1860 there came to the front in Berlin a man who inherited the spirit of the old rulers of blood and iron, a man of great ability, of “wide political experience, of strong will, of unbounded ambition, and without a scrap of conscience— Otto von Bismarck. He formed the plan to again unite the kingdoms and principalities of the German-speaking peoples into a great confederacy under the leadership of Prussia. His aim was to unite Germany and to Prussianise it, and in 10 years he had, in great measure, reached his aim. At the battle of Sadowa in 1866 he drove out the Austrians from interference in German affairs. He then appropriated the Danish provinces of Schleswig and Holstein! In 1870 he attacked Franc?, beat her, and annexed Alsace and Lorraine.' He had reached his goal; he had formed a German empire ; had made the King of Prussia Emperor of Germany and dictator or war lord of Europe. Apparently he desired no more; his scheme was completed.

But was Germany to stop here Would the successors of Bismarck rest content with the limits he apparently had set? After 1870 Germany mad© huge strides forward. Trade and industries rapidly advanced; the population increased ; the cities increased wealth and luxury increased; Berlin rivalled Paris. The hosts of professors, schoolmasters, preachers, journalists, generals, and members of Parliament, began to drum into the people’s ear that they were the choice production, the highest evolution of the human race; the superman of the —first in industries and inventions, first in learning and culture, first in morals and religion. Then such men as Haeckel, Nietsche, Treitschke, and Bernhardi taught the doctrines of a bestial materialism and the direct inferences from these doctrines. The basic germ, of their teaching was force. Force ! The survival of the strongest; might was right; ends were to be reached by fraud, ,by deceit, by cruelty, by violence. War, cruelty, and fraud are the means to all true progress for our race. They taught that the state. as being the strongest combination was supreme, was to be worshipped ; the individual belonged to it not it to him. They taught that the Emperor and his military staff, as holding most power in the State, could command all, make peace and war; and that every faithful German was bound to obey or be shot. For the past 30 years, and with more emphasis for the past 15 years, these doctrines have been preached in Germany until all, from the 9 military courtier at Potsdam to the ragged urchin in the streets

of Cologne, thought that they were the superman, they should hold the first place in the ‘ Welt Politik,’ in the ruling of the world. Why should the V vastly increasing population of Germany not have colonies to expand to? Why should not the seas be fully open to her commerce ? Why should decaying France stand in their way ? Why should a decadent population of grocers, drapers, .and pawn-brokers like the English possess nearly one-fourth of the world, whilst, said they, we are confined to one inland country in our continent. We have the army; we have got a navy; we have got ■ the strength, and now we’ll take our place in the sun! Here is the day and here is the hour ! England is in a civil war raised by an important person called Carson. France has a government of Radical-Socialists no government. Russia is torn by civil strife. * Now,’ said the Kaiser, at a meeting a few days before the war began, as he punched with his thumb on the stomach one Herr Zimmerman, a Conservative member of Parliament, * now we’ll punish them properly.’ (Laughter and applause.) Russia’s declaration to support Servia against Austria, Germany’s ally, was the match to this explosive material. Franc© would join Russia, her ally, and England might or might not take her stand beside France. In the event, the violation of Belgian neutrality, swept away all hesitation on the part of England. Rapidity in action was now the great element in the plan of the German war staff: to strike rapidly at France which was hardly ready for war to turn back and catch Russia before she had gathered her armies—a slow and difficult work by reason of the absence of strategic roads and railways— to return to the west once more and hang, draw, and quarter Old England, any time and at leisure. The dash at France was, because it afforded the best route, to be made through Belgium; she was supposed to be owing to her comparative feebleness, unwilling, or unable to offer any resistance worth considering. Word was sent to ' Albert of Belgium, asking in the most polite terms for permission to pass through his country and large promises were made if he agreed. Then cam© from the Belgian King the answer ever given by brave heroic souls to the bullying mighty foe, the answer given 2300 years ago by Leonidas and his little band of Spartans to the great king Xerxes and his 5,000,000 troops: *No right-of-way ! No road except over our fallen bodies! We will have no breaking of treaties; we will not betray our friends ! No surrender of honor and plighted word!’ (Applause.) Leonidas and his Spartans fell all but one man. Albert knew his army would fall; they were 280,000 then; they are 55,000 now; they have fallen. But he knew he would, by gaining' time, save his friends. France and England he might save ; Belgium he could not save. His refusal was an act of great and heroic statesmanship. That first shot that wrung out from the old forts of Liege was the voice of defiance of a small nation devoted to destruction and death, but answering for Christendom, answering for eternal law and right and justice, answering for the national freedom and the just and due progress of the nations, great and small. That shot fulfilled its mission. Prussian culture, that is, Prussian ‘ brutality and violence, Prussian cruelty, meanness, and fraud, have now no hope of dominating Europe and the world (loud applause). But at what a cost to Belgium ! Her army of 280,000 is now reduced to 55,000, and it is still fighting bravely (cheers). Her ancient cities, her beautiful towns and villages, her fields cultivated like market-gardens—all now a wilderness of ruins—all a desert where demoniacs dwell; and her people, cultured, peaceful, prosperous, religious, driven as wanderers and beggars over the face of the earth. But they have the admiration, sympathy, and gratitude of the nations (applause). Strangers are taking them into their homes, clothing them, feeding them, giving them their money, their encouraging smiles, and their tears. And when the war Is over and the Huns are defeated, the nations of Europe and America will help them to rebuild their cities, towns, villages, and farmhouses, their universities, schools,

4 and hospitals-; they will be honored and cherished as the bravest little people in the world. Albert, their King, will be the royal hero of Europe— second Leonidas whose name will never die (cheers). What will the results of this war be ? It will clear the air very much of false ideals and false principles which have taken hold of the minds of men. It is a contest between ideals, between civilisations. It is a contest between faith in force and majorities and the force of faith in eternal truth, in justice, right, and rational freedom. It is a war of selfishness, ambition, and greed against sympathy, brotherhood, and the spirit of fair play. It is a war of military tyranny against democratic liberty. It is a war of the powerful against the weak, of'might against right. It is a war of great empires against small nations, of Imperialism against Nationalism.. This is an aid contest, this contest between great all-devouring Empires and small nations and races fighting for their independence and their place in the sun. The old Empires of Assyria, Babylon, Macedonia, and Pagan Rome, England, for some time, till she learned the error of her ways by experience, and Germany at the present, stand for this all-absorbing, all-crushing ideal. All the small nations, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, and the Balkan States, even France, Spain, and now England stand for the ideal of every race and nation with distinctive boundaries, traditions, principles, customs working out its destiny in its own working it out freely and independently. Such are the great ideals that are at stake in this war, and we have no doubt as to the result. (Loud cheering.) This is an Irish national concert in aid of the Belgians—a small country crushed while defending its independence, its honor, and its ideals of right and justice. This people and this war must appeal in a special way to Irishmen who for centuries have fought for the ideals at stake. (Cheers.) As a matter of fact this war does so appeal to them. Hence the large number of them at the front. In ‘ Kitchener’s contemptible little army ’ of 180,000, at least 70,000 Were Irish Nationalists, and they sang ‘God save Ireland’ as they rushed the German lines at the battle of the Marne. Hence, Irish Nationalists are offering themselves as recruits in such large numbers from the colonies and from Great Britain and Ireland. Glasgow Nationalist Irishmen to the number of 9000 have volunteered. Manchester has sent 10,000, As a fact Nationalist Irishmen have volunteered in larger numbers than any other class in the whole Empire. (Cheers.)-* It was so always. (More cheers.) The Duke of Wellington said 100 years ago in the House of 'Lords : ‘ One-half of my army was made up of Catholic Irishmen, and but for their bravery and loyalty I tell you my military skill would have availed little.’ (Cheers.) I am sure Sir John French will be able to speak equally favorably at the conclusion of this war of the bravery and loyalty of his fellowcountrymen, the Munster Fusiliers, the Dublin Fusiliers, the Inniskillens, and the Irish Guards. (Cheers.) In working to help the gallant Belgians, you, organisers of this demonstration of sympathy and material aid, are in harmony with the spirit and ideals of the men of your race throughout the Empire. Many of them have already died on the battlefields of Belgium and France for these ideals; you cannot do otherwise than work for them. (Loud and sustained cheering.)