APPEAL TO WORKERS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume VI, Issue 348, 6 February 1917, Page 2

APPEAL TO WORKERS.

» [to the editor.l Sir, —You’ll let me off lightly this time, won’t you I I’ve never done it before, and I’ll promise you faithfully that I might never do it again, but I couldn’t help it this time. I’ve just been reading of the serious shortage of tonnage, and of citizens of our glorious Empire being asked as a point of honour to cut down certain articles of food to the very minimum, not because of personal poverty, but because- of-the-shortage of ships to carry supplies. Alongside of this I read of the men who go down to the sea to load and unload our precious ships standing idly by, while our good ships roll to and fro. equally idly 7, on tfte breast of our old mother, the sea, or leaving for the next port without unloading, and thus losing much valuable energy, when every ounce is required to win the war, and when every ounce of energy that can be exerted by ourselves and our gallant Allies is required that we may leave as a legacy to all who live on this giddy planet after us, a record of a great fight of nations, when right triumphed over might, and that we may leave to these far off people a new command, merit, that if any member of the great big world family offends, or becomes too big for its boots and tries to ride roughshod over its weaker brothers it shall be cut off. For it is better for this cranky old world to continue its mad career through space without a Germany, than for the whole world to go to Hell having a Germany. K Miners and watersiders, the vital brawn and muscle of our nation, listen: A high American official says that “if the Genian fleet got loose it would annihilate the American fleet.” Ever think of anything else it might annihilate in the meantime / But, say you, the German fleet is not going to break loose, and if it does it will soon be tracked and held. But how do you know this! Oh, because away up there on the cold North Sea our Navylads Lave got the German fleet bottled up. Because away up there, where the death and misery is served out in pretty well every horrible form known to sinful man; where men can’t even choose between being burned or scalded to death in a stokehold or engineroom or being blown up to the sky by an explosion, or being slowly drowned or frozen to death in an icy sea ; v, l t ill wounded have to be freed from the frozen deck wit e I up there, and under these conditions, some men an tl d t 7, that’s why I kn al What if Jack Ta t k f 1 t r conditions, or reinseii to fierht the Germans after 5 cl I o i kei for a rise from fag money to a. living wage ’ But, no, Jack will never, never, never, turn dog on us. He will go down to the bottom of the ocean, roasted, or stewed, or cooped up in a little iron room putting in every shot he can while his gun remains above water. We know he will do this, it’s his duty : he’ll do it because it’s his duty 7 ’ What’s our duty 7, your’s and mine! There’s a war on just now! —I am. etc., ALSO A TOILER.