Was It All In Vain ?

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 95, 24 April 1939, Page 6

Was It All In Vain ?

Change in Attitude Wanted Towards War

STIRRING ANZAC APPEAL Telegraph.—Copyright. WELLINGTON, Last Night. Tho following statement, in the form of an Anzac Day message to the people of New Zealand and sigued by men prominently known for their services during the Great War and since then on behalf of returned soldiers, was issued in Wellington to-night:— “On Tuesday we honour the memory of those who gave their lives in the gallant and glorious enterprise which uuited the manhood of Australia and New Zealand under the name of Anzac. They died in a belief in the triumph of a just cause and in the hope of an enduring peace for those who remained. Yet 21 years after the Armistice the threat of war once more hangs menacingly over the world and differences of greater or less moment are continually arising between the nations.

“We feel that the time has come for much more than a ceremonial annual remembrance of their sacrifice. However excellent a thing it is that our people should so honour their war dead, we arc convinced that something greater, some personal sacrifice, is demanded of us to-day. Only in a new quality of thinking and living among all peoples and first of all among ourselves can we adequately and enduringly honour their name and achievement. Matter of Principles

“In a letter to the London Times during tho September crisis Field-Mar-shall Lord Birdwood, with other leaders of tho armed forces and of other sections of national life, eloquently described the true fountain for the lasting peace which is the only memorial worthy of the sacrifice made by our comrades in the Great War. The signatories to the letter declared:

The strength of a nation consists in the vitality of her principles. Policy, foreign as well as domestic, is for every nation ultimately determined by the character of her people and the inspiration of her leader*, by the acceptance in their lives and in their policy of honesty, faith and love as the foundations on which a new world may be built. Without these qualities the strongest armaments or tho most elaborate pacts can only postpone the hour of reckoning. “The letter goes on to affirm that the real need for the day is a moral and spiritual re-armament and that were we, together with our fellow-men everywhere, to put the energy and resourcefulness into this task that we now find ourselves to expend on national defence the peace of the world would be assured. Part of New Zealand “We earruestly commend to the people of this country the message which we have quoted. We commend also to them as urgent the need of our country for the re-building of the moral fibre of our citizenship and the recapturing of the spiritual energy that inspired our pioneer forebears, that under God’s direction this young nation may take her part in the regeneration of mankind. ” The signatories arc Major-General Sir Andrew Russell, Major-General Sir Donald McGavin, Brigadier-General W. Meldrum, Colonel Sir Stephen Allen, Colonel A. E. Stewart, Colonel C. H. Weston, Hon. W. Perry, M.L.C., and Lieutenant-Colonel A. Cowles.