The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1909. THE COMING OF THE SLAV.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2433, 23 February 1909, Page 4

The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1909. THE COMING OF THE SLAV.

Mr W. T. Stead, with his remarkable gift of foresight, in a recent article in tlio “Contemporary Review” points out what he calls the great fact of the day which is in danger of being overlooked and that is the arrival of the Slavs. -• . “The fate of empires is of comparatively small importance when

compared with the destinies of races,” says'-Mr Stead. “The history of mankind is largely - taken up with the ephemeral. The rise and fall of dynasties, the rearrangement of the political configuration of the map—these things arc: easy to discern, but the evolution of races goes on unheeded. Mr Stead tells the remarkable story of. the Slavs, and then lie proceeds: - “The factor that governs the ultimate issue of “ the clash of national forces is not tho statecraft of sovereigns, but the . birthrate of their peoples. If, dismissing all prejudices, political or religious, we concentrate our attention on the birth-rate,, wo see at a glance that the future belongs to tbe Slavs. In the West population tends to a standstill. In France it is even beginning to decrease. -But the Slavonic peoples continue to increase and multiply and replenish the earth. Consequently, Slavonia grows ever more and more, and its growth renders the existing system as useless as pack-thread rounSl the limbs of a giant. The following table of tbe annual excess of births over deaths in tho leading States of Europe may well give pause to those who imagine that the Slavs can much longer be held in political servitude to Germans, Magyars, or Turks :

INCREASE FOR TWELVE MONTHS OF POPULATION SINCE 1904. Russia ... 2,464,000 Germany 822,000 Britain 690,000 Italy 374,000 . Austria 323,000 Hungary 229,000 2,438,000 • Decrease: France ...... 20,000 ' 2,418,000 “If these figures are correct —'and I have not seen them seriously disputed —the overflow of the Slavonian cradle exceeds the overflow of the prolific German, tho fecund Italian, the Hungarian, the British, and the French. It only needs a rule-of-three sum to demonstrate the iuevitableness of Slav ascendancy in Eastern and Central Europe.

"The Slavs alone of the Eastern races can truly say that ‘Time is on our side.’ For them to gain time is all-important. They can afford to wait. It is irritating, no doubt, that the paw of the Austrian should, dig its claws a little deeper into the Servian provinces, but it is an inconvenience as passing, oven if is as annoying, as the measles or the whoop-ing-cough. The dominating fact, every day becoming more supreme, is not the change of the label ‘Occupation’ to the label ‘Annexation.’ It is that all day and. all night, with the undeviating regularity of the movements of the planets in their orbits, the surging tide of Slavonian life rises higher and ever higher. The women who fill the cradle are more potent in the end than all the warriors of all the kings. Pursuing this all-important subjectfurther the writer looks to the future and, indulging in prophecy, declares that the day of cast-iron empires is fast drawing to a close. The new century begins the era of decentralisation -and federation. In one form or another the whole vast stretch of country from Petersburg to Prague and from Prague to Adrianoplo will be covered by a federation or federations of free self-governing States, as peaceful as the Swiss cantons, in which the Slavs, by the sheer force of numbers, will of necessity be in the ascendant. Nor will'it be surprising if the despairing effort of the German to stem the tide of destiny in Posen should lead to the addition of the German Polish lands to the federation of the future. The chief danger, almost the only serious danger, that threatens to retard the inevitable triumph, is the fatal tendency to anarchy that -has ever been the bane of the Slavonian peoples. It was this that ruined Poland. It may postpone indefinitely the coming of the Slav into his kingdom. Only by internal peace can their destiny be achieved, for disunited they will remain the despised and impotent thralls of their neighbors.