Anzac Day

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23003, 24 April 1940, Page 8

Anzac Day

Anzac Day was intended to commemorate the service and sacrifice with which New Zealanders helped to win, as the reward of victory, ah enduring and fruitful peace. It was not hard, in the first years, to be confident that the reward was secure. Confidence, ih fact, over-rode reason, which had many a warning to offer: warning against the causes ef war that the peace settlements diet not remove, did not surely provide against, or actually created, and warning against the fatal error of forget* ting that in human - affairs n. victory, no achievement, is final. Even in the later years, as events both before and after the advent of Nazism brought rash confidence to a more sober outlook and a mere earnest sense that peace was still to be earned rather than accepted, hope remained. It Was not extinguished, though the successive defiances and aggressions of the German Government beat it down. And it is not dead, though they have at last thrown the world into that Conflict which, to the last, British statesmanship strove to avert. Tomorrow Anzac Day will be celebrated by a nation again at war, again fighting the very cause that drew its sons to arms more than S5 years ago. It will be impossible not to recall, sadly, the courage and strength spent then, and the purpose to which they were devoted, But to say sadly is net to say despondently. Gratitude and pride are not lees because, it seems, the purpose has not been fulfilled. It will be wrong to think that the heavy price paid in the years of the (Sreat War was paid in vain, as a mere waste el life and a scattering of all the values of life. They will be most faithful to the meaning of Ansae Day who find its inspiration deeper and stranger. The men of Anzac saw their duty plain and did not swerve from it. The failure which has reproduced the danger and the need to meet it is not theirs. Their example is before their country new, to hearten and direct every man and woman. It carries only this reproach, which* each must search himself to apply: that sacrifice for peace is not

repaid until the responsibilities of peace are fully understood and fully accepted. Anzac Day in time of war is a call to present service and a preparation for the ultimate Service Of peace.