The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. MONDAY, APRIL 24, 1922. THE DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 96, 24 April 1922, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

MONDAY, APRIL 24, 1922. THE DAY.

For the cause that lacks assistants., For the wrong that need* resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that %cc can do.

Unto each man his handiwork, unto each man his crown, The Just fate gives; Wh©Bo takes the world's life on him, and his own lays down. He, dying so, lives.

I In three months it will be eight years since the Great War began, and four years since the final unchecked tide of [victory began to flow. The world has made some recovery from its previous wounds, but still it lies sorely stricken, _o sorely that fresh wounds might mean death. In some countries there is war or the threat of war, and everywhere [there is economic confusion and depression, and material and spiritual depression. Devastation, ruin, debt, national loss and personal bereavement, weigh heavily on tlic whole world. It is not surprising, therefore, that something like despair should settle on the minds of some. "Was it worth it '!" they ask. 'W__t has man gained by the struggle? That tie world would be better off today if there had been no war should want no demonstrating, but that is not the question. What doubters have to ask themselves is what would our position and that, of civilisation be to-day if Germany's challenge had not been accepted, or if Germany had not been defeated. He must be an unimaginative j man who -would say it would be no j worse. Materially Britain and her allies would be infinitely worse off than they arc to-day, but the moral aud spiritual consequences would have been much graver. Autocracy and not democracy would have prevailed, and of all men we should be the most miserable. All that we hold most dear —national love and pride, which at their best are spiritual forces, faith tin the future of our race, political ideals, all would have failed us, and we would be crushed individuals and communities, facing an intolerable present and a hopeless future. We would be units of a world mortally wounded in body and soul.

It i« necessary that this dreadful alternative should be periodically contemplated. There are men who, after bearing no part in the struggle, say that the present state of the world justifies their attitude. To them may be put an analogy. Is the moral duty to rescue

somebody from drowning dependent upon the subsequent conduct or fortune of the rescued? There is for New Zealandere no more fitting time for the consideration of the alternative we have described than Anzac Day. For Australasia it is the chief war anniversary. Then the people of Australia and New Zealand turn their thoughts orce more to the glory and grief of the great struggle, its hopes and fears, fits vicissitudes, its sacrifices, and its overwhelming victory. The word "Anzac," born of the heroism of Gallipoli, stands for our whole part in the war, from the New Zealand baptism of blood on the Suez Canal, to the share in that magnificent last drive of the Allied armies. Our debt to these men of ours is im- ' measurable. Seventeen thousand of them perished, most of them in the flower of their youth. They did three things. They established completely the claim of New Zealand to be a nation, they sealed with their blood the solidarity of the Empire, and they 'died that the world- might be free. This description of their sacrifice is literally true. They were the barrier between our Empire and subjection, between the world and the triumph of barbarism. We are much poorer, and Britain is much .poorer, for 'having accepted the challenge. "From a rich, generous, sanguine nation putting her hope in the future, we shall emerge a rather poverty-stricken nation, bound to consider every penny of increased expenditure; a harassed nation, only fortunate if we are still "free." So ran* a prediction made by a great Englishman early in the war. It has been more than fulfilled. "Only fortunate if we are still free." We are still free, and since the thought of freedom still has the power to stir men's hearts, we rejoice and give thanks to them by whom that freedom came. They died not in vain,| these dear sons and brothers of ours.! They Eve not only in the memory born of personal affection and in the remembrance of their superb soldiership and unsurpassed heroism, but in the fruits of their sacrifice. "Here lie the men," runs an epitaph written by Simonides the Greek, "whose valour was the cause that smoke went not up to

Heaven from high Tegea burning, who resolved to leave their city flourishing in freedom to their children, and themselves to die among the foremost fighters."

'What is' it that we owe to the men for whom to-morrow the bugles will blow again? Briefly, to hold to the faith and to keep the peace. We owe it to their memory and their sacrifice to work for an enlightened democracy, not only to make the world safe for democracy, but to make democracy safe for the world; to defeat, on the one hand, the reaction of privilege, and on the other, the menace of the class war. We owe it to them to uphold the best that is in our national and Imperial tradition, to develop a patriotism that has its stronghold in the spirit and is not a thing of narrow prejudice or outward symbol. We owe it to them, compatible with these things, to strive for peace. The war in which they fell convinced mankind a 9 it has never been convinced before that war is justified only by noble motives, and it is becoming increasingly clear that unless the nations give up war on a large scale, civilisation will be in the gravest danger of perishing utterly. These are what we owe to the dead, the maimed, and indeed all who fought. If we make an honest attempt to pay this debt, tbe terrible sacrifice of thd war years will not have been in vain.