Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 1 June 1916, Page 17

Current Topics

A Castigation for 1 King ’ Carson / Some weeks ago the cables conveyed intimation of the revival of the periodically recurring rumors about the expected overtnrow of tne Coalition Government and the probable establishment of Sir Edward Carson as Premier of England. That is a role which Sir Edward Carson will never be called upon to playhe has not a tithe either of the character or of the capacity necessary for that high office. So also thinks Mr. A. G. Gardiner, who, in an article in the Daily Sews, takes off the gloves to ,‘ King ’ Carson, and deals it out to that pretentious politician straight from the shoulder. Rut before we dethrone Mr. Asquith and crown King Carson,’ he writes, ‘ it may be well to remind ourselves of this gentleman’s past and his credentials. In appearance he is rather like the bold baron of melodrama, and his career accords with his appearance.. It has been a career of turbulent effrontery harsh, aggressive, intolerant; unrelieved by a gleam of humor or a suggestion of statesmanship. “‘I am not paid £SOOO a year for spitting out dirt,” he says, referring to Mr. Birrell, who has spat out less dirt in a lifetime than is contained in that one sentence. “I have taken the opportunity of congratulating Sir John Benn that Ananias is still flourishing,” is his retort to. a mere statement of facts. “ Come and see Lloyd George, the magician. He must be inspired, you know, because he preaches in tabernacles.” That is the crude stuff of his mind,’ adds Mr. Gardiner*. ‘ You will search his speeches in vain for one noble thought, or for one generous political impulse. It. is not the atmosphere of human government that he suggests, but the atmosphere of the prize ring. His effrontery touches a note of ' sublimity. In the House of Commons this week it was he who asked whether the Clyde strikers were to be prosecuted for “high treason.” The House laughed at the impudence of the challenge. Sir Edward Carson denouncing “high treason”! There has in all our history been no such audacious example of defiance of the State as Sir Edward Carson’s civil war campaign in Ulster—the arming of troops to resist the decrees of Parliament, the reviews of the rebels, the flamboyant speeches about breaking every law, the gun-running exploits, the appeals to the Army, the challenge to the Constitution.’ We have not —as many of our readers have—had the dubious pleasure of seeing and hearing Sir Edward Carson in person, but judging him merely by what we have read of his published utter- - ances we must say that our verdict coincides exactly with that of the Daily X ews writer. We have never seen a single utterance of his that touched a high level, either intellectual or moral and the suggestion that such a self-advertising mediocrity should become Premier of Britain can only be regarded as a piece of political hoax and humbug. A Word to the Impatient To all who long to see the end of the war—and who of us does not?—it is undoubtedly something of -a-trial to the spirit to watch the days of the European spring, and then those of summer, > passing steadily away-;with-out hint or sign of an Allied offensive or of the anticipated attempt to break through on the West. But the situation is one in regard to which* it- is -necessary , as it has been so often expressed, to take : long-views ; and we must possess our souls in patience. There are no short cuts to victory in this war; and'the policy of the Allies has been carefully thought out. It : has—at least as regards the breaking through , aspect of ' it—y ' been thus indicated by the Manchester - Guardian :* If we cannot get that superiority this year, we ought to wait till next year, reserving our offensive - activities until the enemy has further weakened himself. It will be a shocking waste of time and money; on the o other , hand we shall save lives, which are more important,-:and we shall have a much better chance of success. The ■> .obsession of the . break-through has, we think, got a

dangerous hold on the popular mind, and it is desirable that the alternative military plans should be carefully considered by the people, as they- have doubtless been by the Government. . , . A Great Concerted Movement Another reason for the delay lies in the fact that, by the decision of the Conference held in Paris a couple of months ago, the great offensive is to be part of a concerted movement. So long as the enemy is able to confine active operations to one main front at a time, his superior railway communications enable him to throw masses of men wherever they are most required and so to hold his own even against armies that are in the aggregate numerically superior to him. A concerted movement, if duly carried out along the lines arranged at the Conference referred to, will change all that, and will rob the Germans of. the immense advantage they have hitherto possessed. ‘ A great concerted movement,’ says the Statist, ‘in every field of operations will make it impossible for the Germans to transfer troops from West to East, or from East to West, and, therefore, will make secure, in a manner never hitherto done, the real inferiority of the audacious enemy who hoped for- a victory snatched by Ion" preparation and sudden surprise. The first few months of the war, and the whole of last year, a movement of the kind was impossible, because Germany had for a whole generation and more been preparing for the aggression for which she chose both the time and the occasion, while those she attacked had supinely neglected to make themselves ready to meet aggression. Twenty months have, however, n’ow passed since the outbreak of hostilities. We seem justified in concluding that the Allies will be prepared when the right time comes to assume the offensive in genuine concert.’ Such a movement can, of course, only be carried out when all the Alliesincluding Russia—are fully equipped and ready ; and when that moment arrives, things may be expected to happen. Will Rome be Shelled? The week’s cables record a vigorous Austrian offensive against the Italians, and report that in the opinion of experts it forms part of a carefully prepared plan of the Central Powers the object of which is to smash France and Italy, and thus leave themselves free to deal with Russia when, she shall have -again become dangerous. In pursuance of this scheme it is probable that Austrian air-ships and air-planes may become active, and it is even within the bounds , of possibility that Rome itself may become the subject of their attentions. Already they have assailed Ancona, Rimini, Venice, Ravenna, Milan, and some smaller places and although the Eternal City is, of course, much further distant than any of these, it is, nevertheless, within striking range, and the contingency at which we have hinted is seriously discussed in the journal Rome of February 19. The paper finds itself able to take an optimistic view of the situation. There are, it thinks, at least two considerations which will render Rom© immune from attack. ‘ The first is the presence of the Holy Father in the Eternal City: the belligerents may refuse to listen to him when he counsels, peace and moderation, but there is a tacit understanding that even this war can be fought out without violating his residence. And the other is the fact that Rome is such a treasury of art and history that no belligerent would dare to bring destruction upon it without the certainty of . securing some great and direct military advantage, a contingency which is at present impossible. So we live on quietly here with a never fear that we shall be startled some day to see St. Peter’s or the Pantheon or the venerable columns of the Forum shattered into pieces before our eyes.’

Rome is, of course, in the best position to judge, but for ourselves we would not care to gamble very heavily , on ’ the chance of Austria showing any . very scrupulous regard for these considerations. War is

■war j and so far neither religious nor artistic sentiment lias been allowed, to exercise any serious influence over the belligerents. As, we have mentioned, several of the Italian cities have already been bombarded from the skies, and some deplorable damage has been done. At Ravenna, for example, a city which was once not merely the rival but th? mistress of Rome, one of the bombs found its billet in the ancient church of S. Apolliuare Nuovo, ‘as to the importance ■of which,’ says the famous art critic, Corrado Ricci, ‘ I think there is no person of even mediocre culture who does not know it. The wonderful mosaics, fourteen centuries old, had remained unscathed down to our own days, and of these Corrado Ricci says, ‘ the two rows of Martyrs and Virgins are a miracle of decoration: the constant repetition of the similar white figures on a green ground against a golden sky touches the soul like the rhythm of the litanies.’ ' Probably,’ comments Rome , the air-men were not persons of even mediocre culture, most likely they could not see the venerable church beneath them, certainly they did not aim at it, but the bomb they let loose on Ravenna wrecked the ancient portico, destroyed a large portion of the facade, and injured some of those precious mosaics which had been spared by the vicissitudes of fourteen centuries. • What, then, might not happen in Rome, the city of the soul,” were we to be visited by the ill-omened birds from the north ’ In regard to Venice, elaborate precautions were long ago taken to save its priceless art treasures in the event of aerial , attack. The venerable mosaics on the lunettes of St. Mark’s have been blotted out by modern masonry, the golden cupolas are shapeless bags, the pillars and arches have become a brick fortress that engulfs all the fairy portico of the Doges’ Palace hard by. 4 Where are the four famous horses of golden bronze,’ asks a writer in the Sphere, brought from Constantinople to defy the world through seven centuries from the portals of St. Mark’s It was a sad scene the other day, when a silent crowd watched their descent for conveyance to a safer stable, recalled their last and only descent when they were stolen by Buonaparte, the Attila of another age, recalled also and anticipated the joy of their glorious restoration.' And the horses seemed to share in the humiliation, anxious, though still proud, as they swung through the air, then mocked-in a Calvary of cavalry—-on trestles as though they stood part of a merry-go-round. ’ One thing is certain: If Rome ever should be the subject of attack, the deed would be not only a crime but a blunder of the first magnitude, which would do more to alienate sympathy from the side of the destroyer than any transient military success could possibly compensate for. ■ After the War—the German View

The special Berlin correspondent of the Jew York American has been giving his readers some communications on the interesting point as to how Germany views her future after the Avar; and it cannot be denied that there is a good deal of solid fact in what he has printed. After the usual talk about everything going on as usual, and about the plentifulness of money—which may be taken with the customary grain of salt—he gets down to the strictly business outlook. He has been talking to one of the most prominent business men of Leipzig, and after some preliminary conversation, he asked this question: 4 What about after the war?’ We quote the correspondent’s account of the dialogue; 4 ‘Oh, that will be all right,” he said quickly. His business was dyestuffs. ‘‘Business will boom after the war. The countries of the world will have to come to us. We have for sale what they must buy.” “But if the war goes on, won’t your customers in other countries be forced to manufacture your products themselves?” Impossible,” he laughed. An industry like dyestuffs which we have been forty years in building cannot be duplicated in three. Remember, the German capitalists, to gain the secret of the dyes, were content to finance chemists to let them work year #fter year upon a .single shade wjtljput getting a cent.

financial return. In America, for instance, your capitalists would demand returns much quicker. And suppose there was, an American capitalist willing to wait a long time for results; willing to finance chemists with ho assurance that their experiments would produce the* secret of dyes. Before , the capitalist could gain any results on a big scale the war . would be over and we’d swamp the American market with our products.” ’

The representatives of other businesses—naturally enough—take precisely the same view. ‘ I heard a big business man of Frankfort,’ says the correspondent, ‘ make the same statement. I sat with him one night talking about his business, chemicals. (He is owner of one of the largest chemical companies in Frankfort.) ... I asked him something that 1 had often heard, especially from ' Englishmen —that Germany has made herself so disliked in this war that from purely personal animosities her business, when peace comes, is going to suffer. And the head of Frankfort’s big chemical house smiled. . “ I. can show you,” he said, “orders now on my books that have been received from English, French, and American firms since the outbreak. of war. They were forwarded through my agents in neutral European countries. You see business is business. Mi*. Blackstone, in England, has got to have something that 1 manufacture in Germany. Because England and Germany have had a Avar, because England and Germany have called each other ■the worst names, it does not mean that Mr. Blackstone and I hate each other. Personal friendships are not killed by a war. They are strained or perhaps broken off while the war is on, but when peace comes everybody shakes hands and does business again. You see, business is not done by nations but by individuals. I don’t hate Mr. Blackstone any more than he hates me. I have also big friendships in South America. Of course, American and English companies are- going in there now and trying to cut out the ground from under my feet. Until they get the real thing—my goods—my trade there will take their substitutes. I tell you in all candor that we are not at all worried about the future of our business.” ’ There is, as we have said, little that can be questioned in these statements and arguments. When the German commercialist takes his stand on the aphorism that 4 Business is business,’ he is building on a foundation that is not- likely to be seriously shaken.