BORDEN'S APPEAL.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLII, Issue 1031, 6 December 1917, Page 3

BORDEN'S APPEAL.

"SUPPORT OR DESERTION." WHAT ISTTTO BE? (Router's Telegram.) LONDON, Nov. T). Reuters correspondent at Halifax (Nova .Scotia) telegraphs:— "Iu opening the Governments election campaign, the Premier, Sir Robert Borden, said that the only alternative to conscription was to leave the Canadian divisions in France without support, and without reinforcements. His heart and conscience would not permit him lor a moment to endure the thought of the latter alternative. Thus the circumstances imposed upon him the stern duty of providing reinforcements by means of the selective draft under compulsory provisions. The need for reinforcements was imperative in view of the events in Russia and Italy. Never was there, greater necesiity to summon their sternest resolve and gird on their fullest strength. A referendum would have caused too great a delay, perhaps a year. Sir Robert Borden concluded :—''The soil of France and Belgium is hallowed by the graves of our dead. If the task J to which these men consecrated their lives in the last sacrifice remains unaccomplished, shall we not stand silent, ashamed, and humiliated before those who return? Not only from the living, but from the fallen also comes to Canada, their beloved benign mother, a call for aid. Their appeal tells you more eloquently than any words of mine that there is at present but one supremo issue before the. Canadian people—shall Canada's effort in the war he maintained or withdrawn? Shall the Canadian army at the front be supported or deserted ? "The responsibility rests upon each of you men and women. 1 pray it may lie so fulfilled as to justify the sacrifice and the bravery voluntarily endured on many a battlefield in France and Belgium by those whom Canada sent forth in this awful struggle against the most relentless and most brutal, and most powerful militarism that ever threatened to bring the world within the orbit of its accursed tyranny."