ESSENTIAL TO VICTORY.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 251, 20 October 1916, Page 7

ESSENTIAL TO VICTORY.

ELEMENTS OF DEFEAT. MONEY GRUBBERS AND SHIRKERS. AN OUTSPOKEN CLERGYMAN. A scathing denunciation of men who are shirking their responsibilities and duty in regard to the war, and of moneygrubbing individuals who are growing rich on the pressing needs of the Empire wa6 uttered by the Rev. W. S. Rollings, a Baptist minister at a patriotic demonstration held on Monday in the Hanover Street Church, Dunedin, in connection with the New Zealand Baptist Conference. The Rev. Rollings said that the aim of the allied Powers was the conscription of all those things which were essential to victory, and the prohibition of all the elementß of defeat, lie bad recently taken a train journey SO milessouth of Dunedin, and during that journey he had been brought face to face with three elements of defeat. At one station he saw thousands of men and women in a field, to tneir shame be it said. Their hearts were vibrating with excitement and lust of covetousness. These thousands of men should have been in the trenches —(applause)—instead of living selfishly ill this way. From the moral and economic point of view they were living damnably while the purple stream of our Empire was flowing freely with increasing volume to give these people the right to be free. (Applause.) In New Zealand this thing had taken such a strong hold of the people that when the first news of the Jutland battle came through, and it looked like the defeat of our Na.vy, the Auckland Racing Club was holding its race meeting, and there was the jingle of unclean coins heard in the totalizator. It might have been the requiem of our defeat, and the requiem of our expiring liberty. A few days later the people in Auckland were celebrating the death of Lord Kitchener, England's greatest eoldier. in a similar fashion. This ought to be prohibited. Continuing h» jour' ney on the southern train, the speaker said that he had another experience. This was the second element of defeat. A man who had lost his money and his train ticket came into the train. He was a returned soldier, and has still a bullet in his hip. and was suffering from the effects of inebriation. This made us ashamed of this heroic manhood sul* merged in the horrible custom of [ "boose." In this train, too. there was j a burly farmer who -boasted that during the past two years he had made 'a good pile of money. He said he had three sous on the farm with him, and they, with him, had.put their shoulders to the money piling business with much success. Asked the ages of these Bona, this farmer replied that they were 20. 22. and 20 years respectively. A gentleman ih the carriage asked why none of them waß at the war. The money-piling farmer replied: "Ah! we are too damn smart for them." Then the gentleman ; said: "My only son is at the war fighting for such skunks as you and your three money-making sons." (Applause.) |The hottest place in Hades '(said the speaker) was not too' hot for such men as these. (Applause.) Here Was a | trinity of elements which were guilty of weakening the bulwarks of the safety ,of our Empire. The army under the ! English flag was (said Mr Rollings) the most moral and most humane army that Sever took the field. How cruel was it, then, to think that our boys were morally safer in the villages of France |or in the trenches than they were in the streets of New Zealand cities.