PEACE IN A YEAR?

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIX, Issue 285, 2 December 1915, Page 2

PEACE IN A YEAR?

; ITS DISADVANTAGES.

"I pray to God," said Dr 'MoNab, in a recruiting speech at Ashbnrton. the other night, "that peace does not come within the next twelve months, because it wil take that ..time for us 1o get back to the ground from which we can dictate our own terms of peace." He quoted the statement that peace to-day would be a victory to Germany. Kitchener" wanted steady recruiting. . He was proud to realise that his countrymen wexe not to be frightened by danger or disaster. They were not to be recruited by ''namby-pamby" words, but by serious reverses and disasters. The difficulty was to bring the seriousness of the war to their imagination, j The folly that had to be- coifibated was the idle statement that this was the Kaiser's war. Germany, from the humblest upwards, had no religion but the successful carrying on of the war. She had reduced tho cost of living to a scientific basis. The only limit to the number of men to be sent from New Zealand was the | number required to keep up the rein- [ forcements from month to month. If j the young men who remained did their duty, there was no fear of the I result. But it meant 2000 every six | weeks, and every centre must work |to that end. A lot had boen said i 0.1,0ut conscription, and for every man ! who went into camp a whole family ! became conscriptionists. And if the ■; war went on without the men to take I the places of those who had gone ! forward, he would be a fool if he did ! not admit the natural consequences. ; But he relied on the young men/ believing that tho war would be the triumph of the nation with ideals, and without forced military service, over a nation that had forced its men to fight.