OUR DEBT TO THE DEAD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16847, 11 May 1918, Page 1 (Supplement)

OUR DEBT TO THE DEAD.

ITS DISCHARGE in deeds.

BY MAIANGA*

WI E enough do We think on our debt ■hnSS I™?" ® nt for their Presence we should be homel«3s, poor, forlorn. We awaken to this debt on occasion, and seek to pay it m he 00111 of respect and sympathy ™ thanks. »' what of the dues o the dead. They never dun us. Their lips are mute. Their hands are no longer open or outstretched. Yet make they appeal in the memory of worthy deeds, and it is given to lips still living to voice their urgent claims to honour and to praise. The pioneers of our liberties, the founders of our homes, the makers of our opportunities, they deserve well of ns. But for them life for us would be straitened and unfilled. Many of them shortened their days that ours might have plenitude of good, and imperilled their own lives that ours might be secure. Let honour be theirs. What if some things have come down to us that we would gladly bo without? What if soma burdens have been left for us to lift? There is such a preponderance of gain that only morbid minds account the troubles and tasks bequeathed by dead hands. In our new land beneath the southern stars we do well to pay as we can our debt of thanks to its early settlers and to the great company of earlier generations who ministered oft-times unwitting, to our prosperity. Nor should wo forget tho solitary souls who dared to stand, without help of fellowship, for ideals as yet unglimpsed by any save themselves— Tb® lord's lone sentinel*, JJotted down the years, The little pray _ company Before the pioneers. But it is not the far past only that calls to us to pay a debt to the dead. These days of our own are vibrant with the appeal. Take up again any daily paper of this week. Which of its contents makes the deepest thrust at our spirits? It is a list of names, ranged in serried sequence in the 801 l of Honour, and chief in that gallant band of suffering soldiers are those whose fighting is forever done. For every one of those names distinguished by letters of reverent black there is some spot near the western trenches made sacred by the last rites for the dead. For every one of them there is some home left desolate far from that stricken field. And those men that march in column upon our sorrowing notice are but the latest companies of a great host gone down the road of death. Hush! Let their footfalls, almost lost in the. distance, visit our hearts again, as we think of our debt to them. The Account Rendered. | In, Flanders yonder there are stretches of low-lying ground, claimed once by our dead who lie there, but fallen again into the hands of their foe. On the heights above Ansae Beach the manuka blooms above the iesting places of the boys who headed New Zealand's advance upon that foe. And between that valorous vanguard and their heroic followers of to-day there is a long line of brave men who marched to death—for vs. We uncover instinctively, in spirit, as we think of them, and recall our debt. V; , . How shall that debt be paid? In part by honouring remembrance. The names of these 'heroes shall be emblazoned upon roll and tablet. Some of them, specially distinguished by royal favours and military decorations, shall be given publio memorial. But all shall be remembered. Their sacrifice of ease, their uncomplaining endurance, their courage triumphing over unfamiliar perils, their selfless care for comrades, their manful recklessness at the call of duty, and their laughter in the face of death, shall have fit monument. Song and story shall brine them again and again before us, and theirs shall be a national immortality. ' But, as theirs was a death met in action, we should ill discharge our debt in mere remembrance, however . honouring. They must be paid in kind. We have incurred a debt of deeds. We are pledged to carry to a triumphant issue the cause in which they fell. We must take the trail they took when they went out for us, and complete, the victory their valour began. .When we get war-weary we should recall —their courage and their sacrifice. When there comes a temptation to compromise with the enemy in order to buy ease, we should bring to mind their valour and their loss. Shall we accept a peace that makes their sacrifice of none effect? Shall these buried foundation-stones of a better World have no structure reared

upon them? Our debt to the dead cannot be paid thus. Dr. McCrae, of Canada, has voiced the appeal of our men fallen on the western front: In Flanders' fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row. That mark our place, and m the sky The larks still bravely singing fly, Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the dead." Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glo#, Loved and were loved; and now we lie In Flanders' fields. Take tin our quarrel with the foe. To you from failing hands we throw The torch— yours to hold it high; If ye break faith with us who die. "We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders' fields. The Peace for Which They Died. Replying to Mr. Woodrow Wilson's reassertion of hopes of a negotiated peace, in days before his enlightened judgment snapped his patience with German intrigue, Mr. Bonar Law declared : " What President Wilson is longing for we are fighting for, our sons and our brothers are dying for, and we mean to secure it. The hearts of the people of this country - are longing for peacea peace that will bring back in safety those who are dear to us, but a peace that will mean also that those who will never come back shall not have laid down their lives in vain." * That is the only way we can adequately pay our debt to the dead. Thus only can we make the world the better through their loss. If the peace that closes this strife should still leave the world afraid to go to sleep in the dark, if it be such a peace that allows Prussian militarism freedom to gather strength for another savage onslaught upon the world, then will our dead have died in vain, and we be dishonoured by a debt incurred, but undischarged. But there are other dead than ours, you say—the enemy's dead. There are. Those amongst them who have pai<| this penalty for their deliberate and open-eyed violation of their fellow's rights have their reward. Their death was part of the price exacted by the coming of the day they did not wish to see. They have been slain by the lightning of the storm they would have brought upon others. For them there should be no maudlin regrets. H'lvevcr, fallen with them is a great host of those they led in blind obedience. Unknowing. they are guiltless. They become the victims of Prussian Junkers as truly as did Serbs and Belgians, albeit they stood in an alien army. Their deaths, too, demand that the fight be continued inexorably until the brutal power that victimised them be utterly crushed. We < fight their battles though they, maybe, 1 little thought it, and their sacrifice adds to the responsibility clearly ours to rid the world of that which oppressed them equally with us. 'So shall we pay . our I debt to the dead* J