NEW ZEALAND MINERS FIRST

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 88, 13 April 1917, Page 6

NEW ZEALAND MINERS FIRST

s'The- New Zealanders were first, the Soots a hundred yards behind." Thus tersely and eloquently the cablegram records the result of the tunnelling competition preceding the Battle of Arras, in which the miners strove with each other to contribute the greatest amount of gallery work for the overthrow of the entrenched Hun. ; In every sense it was an Homeric struggle, carrying in its train the highest modern forms of death and'destruction-; and yet it was relieved on our side by the old British, sporting instinct, which carries men with a jest to toil or to victory or to the grave. In this strenuous subterranean competition beneath the. stricken soil of France one sees again, visualised in a far different environment, the struggle on the fair fields of v Britain between the New Zealand All Blacks and the players of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Once again, in war as in sport, the men from oversea have compared favourably with their forbears, and the playing fields of the nation have proved to be in this- respect (if not in certain others) the training-ground of victory. But there is one still more striking aspect. These victors in subterranean France are New Zealand miners, and yet while ' they strain their fierce energy in the Empire cause, comrades and fellow-unionists in New Zealand deliver the easy stroke, and by restriction of coal output handicap the national war-effort. The inconsistency } madness, and tragedy of it are pathetic. Is there not yet tune for New Zealand workers to turn their attention from the words of tho soap-bos to the deeds done in the galleries' at Arras? At this stage of the war no other sort of gallery-work counts; and Labour's reward will' surely be proportioned to its loyalty'to the national idea. We are glad that this inspiring news "from Arras comes-at a moment when the industrial tide on. the West Coast appears to he on the turn.