BRITAIN'S PART IN THE WAR

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue LXXIV, 21 August 1919, Page 4

BRITAIN'S PART IN THE WAR

ALLIES COULD NOT HAVE WON WITHOUT IT. Sir Joseph Ward, speaking at a luncheon at the New Zealand Club in Wellington on "Tuesday, referred to the achievements of Great Britain during the war. "The old "Motherland, for which we can never do enough, was responsible, by her persistence and courage, for the final success of the Allies in the great war," he said. "It does not matter what any other country may say, whether it is a country with Stars and Stripes or any other kind of stripes, the fact remains that had it not been for the strength of Great Britain and the sturdiness and steadiness of the British people during times of great trial, the Allies could not have won the war. But for those factors it would not have been possible for the Allies' to have continued the war until the United States decided to come in at the psychological moment for the purpose of putting the final stone to the structure of victory which Britain had so well laid and so well guarded. "We marvel at the power and e-trength of Great Britain in connection with world affairs. Without the support of British finance, France and Italy, and in the early years of the "war Russia, could not have carried on. Without Britain's wonderful means of transport across the Channel and her supplies of material, th e war could not have been carried on. Without the determination of the people of Britain, inespective of the political changes that took place during thewwatr t the German onslaught could not have been defeated. Above all and beyond all, the war could not have been waged for a month without the commanding power of the grand old British Navy. (Applause.)

"The great war that the world ha* suffered," added Sir Joseph Ward, "was made by a man who was not appointed to his. ' high position, but got there by virtue of heredity. The war started because the Kaiser and his war lords wanted to overrun the Continent of Europe. They had a mightygood chance of doing it. and but for the 150,000 brave British men who crossed the Channel in August 1914,: they would have succeeded. The end bf the war finds the Kaiser deprived of his high position and hie powers, and relegated to something like oblivion. The lesson will not be forgotten. Thia war has brought into the minds of peoples; dominated by militarists a realisation that no hereditary ruler should ever have in the future the power to plunge masses of men into war. The nations realise that the heads of Governments should be the representatives of the people. There is the keyto safety. The victory of the Allies has come to preach for history a blessed sermon of peace. The young people now growing up in Europe are not going to allow any hereditary ruler to drive them into a harrowing and devastating war."

Sir Joseph Ward added that when he had 6een the thousands, indeed hundreds of thousands, of crosses that marked the once 6miling provinces of France, his blood had boiled to think that so much agony and ruin, so much cruel suffering and irreparable loss, could have been caused by a ruler ana his war lords, who wanted to rula Europe. New Zealand people could scarcely realise the horrors of war. But the men who had been to thfr front from this country would not forget. He believed that as the Buffering and the lose had been great, so was the reward great. Britain and her Allies had vindicated freedom and had taught a lesson of peace to the militarists of the world.—Dominion.