The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1916.

Evening Star, Issue 16033, 9 February 1916, Page 4

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1916.

The Governor-General of the Commonwealth (Sir R. C. The Only Thing Munro-Ferguson) has That Matters. caused to be issued

a statement iu the course of which he says that “ the Govern“ment having called for all available “assistance, and being in need of all the “ money the country can spare, the “ Governor-General will no longer attend “race cr other meetings which it may be “held would tend to dissipate energy and “ divert funds from -the service of the “war.” Had some similar statement been published at the beginning, of the war it would not improbably have given rise to far more comment than it is likely to do after eighteen months of the most sanguinary, as it is the most momentous, war iu history. The significance of tho announcement, it seems to ns; is not that it has teen made, but that it has been made now. It may he regarded as a clarion call to duty, and a timely reminder, which from the nature of its source cannot be overlooked, that for Australia there is only one thing that matters—viz., tho consecration and whole-hearted devotion of her people to the service of the war. Nothing else should be permitted to stand in the way or to distract public attention. There must be no dissipation of energy and no diversion of funds from the one and only cause that counts, and to which the people of Australia, in common with all others throughout the Empire, stand committed, and upon which they have ventured their all.

We shall do wrong, and shall mistake botlx the spirit and meaning of the Gover-nor-General’s decision, if we narrow it down to an official opinion, upon the ethics of horse racing. Thcl message has a. broader, a higher purpose than that. It is neither a tirade against nor a denouncement of sport qua sport in any form, but a. needed reminder to the thoughtless and careless that the fit and proper medium for the spending of energy and money in these days of stem and stress is in the service of'the war. So interpreted, it is as applicable to a section of the people of this Dominion as of the Commonwealth, and we repeat that its significance is that it has heen thought desirable to proclaim it now. Sir It, Munrc-Fer-gusong message does not stand alone. Careful readers will have noticed that almost similar warnings, for such they are, arc coming from other sources. Statesmen, admirals, and divines have been saying much the same thing and preaching much the same doctrine. Entreaty, protest, and prayer alike have for their burden the words “prepare” and let us take these grave happenings “around ns as become the men and ‘‘women of a great inheritance whoso “continuance is seriously menaced.” ‘1 no re are yet numbers among us who have but the most vague ideas of where they are, what is going on around them, and what the end will he. They have some confused idea, for which they conld give no rational, justification, that somehow Britain will come out all right, and that tnings thereafter will resume their wonted course. We believe, though probably on quite other grounds, that Britain and the Empire will emerge victorious from the dangers that now confront them. But we aro also certain that the men and women who have been ‘‘‘disturbed” by the war, and who confidently expect that when it is over they will quietly pick up the thread of their pre-war existence and continue as usual, arfT destined to a rude awakening. Neither the world nor the Empire will be the same, and the sooner all men and all women begin to adapt themselves to this plain truth the better will it be for them and theirs. Meantime the world waits in anxious suspense. There is a dearth of news, but below this dearth and underneath this seeming stillness great are toward. The whole earth 19 in sore travail, and feverishly preparing itself for the coming of those days and nights when men must get to death-grips with each other for the freedom of the nations. This and none other. The old struggle for individual liberty has again to be faced and fought, and Mother Land and Oversea Dominions at this hour are preparing for the fray. W© shall not venture into the realm of prophecy. What we do know, however, is that within the next few months, at most, there must be more and even greater slaughter than that of the near past; also that the fate of our Empire has yet to be decided. Hence the imperious need for renewed calls to service. On the one side aro those whom the ‘ Cologne Gazette,’ closing its eyes and ears and intelligence to the fate of Belgium, Serbia, Armenia, and [Russian Poland, calls ‘‘our beloved “ European Kings fighting for the freedom “of Europe against the Anglo-French “lawyer class”; and, on the other, not merely lawyers, but whole peoples who have risen in armed revolt not for an extension of frontiers, a more assured position, a larger place in the sun, or to secure that commanding, authoritative voice in the direction of the world’s affairs that is theirs by the right of the sword and the superior “ Kultur ” of those who wield it, but in order that they may preserve and continue in the state of individual and national freedom that they claim as their birthright. To us it has always,seemed possible, in relation to the tragic crisis through which mankind is now passing, to rise superior to the mere claims of race. Surely it should not require that a man he not a German, or not the occupant of either the Papal or a Presidential chair before ho can declare himself as a plain, individual on what he thinks of and how he regards the declared policy and known atrocities of the German Kaiser and his War Lords. We have always imagined that there are some things failing the possession of which place, power, and prosperity—even life itself—cease to be worth the having; and to this choice the world has now come. Neutrals, indifferents, and outsiders during these next few months must either rang© themselves on the side of darkness, nameless horror, and Germany or upon that of national freedom, Christian civilisation, and the Allies.