GERMANY’S THIRST FOR GLORY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2503, 17 May 1909, Page 6

GERMANY’S THIRST FOR GLORY.

THE AWFUL MEANING OF INVASION.

Mr Frederic Harrison, writing in tlie London “Times,” says:.—“To talk of friendly relations with Germany and the domestic virtues of the Fatherland is childish. ‘Who in 1800 knew tlial Prussia was to be the dominant power in Europe? Who in 1804 imagined that she was to defeat Austria? Who in 1808 foresaw that in two years she wou'd be in Paris? Who in 1888 dreamed that she would be our rival 'at sea ? And what impelled the cultured realm of the Hohenzollerns to break out in “blood and iron,” to smash Denmark, to humiliate Austria, to overwhelm France, to defy England on the sea ? What was the motive or the cause? What but thirst of national glory?

“If ever our naval defence were broken through, our navy overwhelmed, or even dispersed for a season, and a military occupation of our arsenals, docks, and capital, were effected, the ruin would be such as modern, history cannot parallel. It would not be the Empire, but Britain that would be destroyed. Napoleon’s invasions of Italy, Spain, Austria, Germany and Russia offer no true analogy. Nor do the Gorman occupation of France and the entry into Paris in 1870-. L offer more than a faint parallel. “A catastrophe so appalling cannot bo left to chance, even if the probability against its occurring wore 50 to 1, No the odds are not 50 to 1. No high authority ventures to assert that, a successful invasion of England is absolutely impossible if it were assisted by extraordinary conditions, and a successful invasiou would mean to us the total collapse of our Empire, our trade, and with trade the means of feeding forty millions in these islands. How idle are fine words about retrenchment, peace, and brotherhood, while we lie, open to the risk of unutterab.e ruin, to a deadly fight for national .existences and to war in its most destructive and most cruel form !”