THE WILL TO VICTORY.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 126, 28 May 1918, Page 4

THE WILL TO VICTORY.

Tenacity is the supreme factor in war, and the nation that can hold on when things look darkest is the nation that is going to win in the end. History has shown again and again that the tenacious nation is often much nearer the end of a. war than most people supposed. In the wars with Marlborough Fiance faced a desperate outlook before .Malpiaquet, but the double victories at Malplaquet and Mons made the outlook almost hopeless. Yet with a bankrupt Treasury, beggared taxpayers, and a ruined harvest, France still held on. and her tenacity was rewarded when Marlborough was paralysed for want of loyal support, the Whig Ministry fell a prey to faction, and Louis was able as a consequence to make peace in terms of an honourable compromise. Sheer tenacity saved Frederick of Prussia at the moment when everything seemed so desperate that he wrote: 'God knows what my future is to be this year. I grieve to resemble Cassandra with my prophecies; but how augur well of the desperate situation which we are in. and which goes on growing worse? lam so gloomy to-day that I will cut short." Wellington's patient heroism sapped Napoleon's power in the Peninsula when both Houses of Parliament had declared that they regarded the Peninsular contest as hopeless. So in the American Civil War. Jn the summer of 1804, in spile of many successes won by its generals, the North was very despondent. Grant seemed to be making no progress, and even Sherman was held to be ineffective in his Georgia campaign. Croakers surrounded Lincoln, imploring him to end the useless slaughter on any terms obtainable, and for the moment even Lincoln wavered. Hut only for the moment. His splendid courage held him to his task, and a few months afterwards Sherman had completed his march to the sea at .Savannah, and the Southern Secretary admitted in a confidential letter that the game was up. It is instructive to note that at the very time the South knew the war was lost if the North held on for even a few weeks, the Southern President was loudest in his bluster, and talked of compelling the Yankees to sue for peace on any terms obtainable. Two months later it was the South, not the North, that surrendered at Appomattox. Lincoln would have no truce, he would leave no war to be fought again by the children of the men who had died in the cause of the Union. His tenacity won. Our tenacity is going to win now, for the Saxon race has not degenerated. Germany's first great offensive has failed to achieve the expected results, and the Allies are confident of holding the second. The Allied line stands unbroken in the West. The submarines are no longer a real danger, and we are undisputed masters in the air. We have clung on with grim tenacity with armies in retreat, with guns and equipment falling daily into enemy hands, with ranks broken but undismayed. We know now that we can do these things unafraid, and that knowledge is our victory and German defeat. The grim tenacity that saved Europe in the opening years of the century we have passed is going to save civilisation itself in the opening years of the century that lies before us.