"SPECTRE OF PEACE."

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 March 1917, Page 8

"SPECTRE OF PEACE."

MOCKERY AND WASTE. DEATH BED WARNING. A correspondent, sent "The Times" a copy o| a letter lie received Iro/ii a major of the R.A.AI.C, asking lum to . visit in a certain hospital a dying soldier —a corporal--who had "a 'message'' to give him. Tlie soldier, a V\ eisinnan, liad undergone two amputations and was suffering from abdominal wounds. Before jomng the Army he had been a platform speaker and ail opponent of national service and militarism generally. When the co-respondent reached the dyir;|- man's bedside lie learned chat the •'message" was a warning to the people against an unsatisfactory peace. "They say." he said, "that people will lake notice of wnat a man says from lus heart, when he's dying. I've somehow lost any skill ' used to have in putting a case. Talk doesn't amount to much in soldiering, you know. But if only you can somehow put it tor me ; get what J. want to say to them ; to the people—God bless 'em ! —they'll understand. . . As sure as God is in Heaven, my friend, if our people are deceived at this stage, then ail t-tie tens of thousands of 'bits' that have been done by our men ; yes, and by the hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers who have gene West with a sure faith in their hearts; all will be made a mockery and. a waste.'' After a protest against the "fog of peace vap.airings" raised by "honest dupes, perverse cranks, or treacherous blackguards." the soldier said: - "This is my dying message to my fel-iow-eoniitrviih'ii at home. The one ].iaiiis|uii;!g of the strength and endurance that lias protected al| the world West of that blood-soaked line from the North Sea to Switzerland is ihe sure knowledge that we light, not for this or that country of territory, but for the salvation of humanity, and the preservation of decency and freedom airs justice, as we understand them; ami the sure faith that if we urn steadfast v.v tniisl triumph, that if we triumph if is for good and all, that this shall be Ihe last struggle, the last sacrifice, and that, by it. we earn real safety and security for our children and for t heir children. "That greater motive thai any one country van supply is what the FrancoBritish line has fed and lived and fought on. and will light on to the end. That is the spirit which has carried even men who cannot understand and recognise if. smiling into the presence of Death himself. "Morally. Germany was beaten before the end of 1914. and knows ft. In a military sense she is not yet beaten, and will not be for months to come. J let war machine is a great and terrible engine of destruction and of enforced martyrdom, prepared through 40 years to ilo its present devilish work. Until the Boche is beaten and broken, ill the full military sense, no other reward for our sacrifice--, no belter legacy lor our cin.dren can possibly be won, than a miserable, spectre of peace, based upon —wham' Upon German promises; Would you have our own glorious dead mocked, our own yet unborn children betrayed, by the battering of our sacrifices for German promises ' "Trie heart of our people is sound as a bell, and their minds are set. Do not suffer them to be poisoned into blind gropings after treachery, by the vapouvings of either traitors, cranks, or foids, Per the country but he true, true to the bitter end to its fighters; and its fighters will be true to. the country aim' its sacred cause." h\ the early morning of the last day of 1915 (writes the correspondent) the coipoval passed away \t)iy peacefully to the rent he had earned.