THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1918. NEW ZEALAND'S PART.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17007, 14 November 1918, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1918. NEW ZEALAND'S PART.

"It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in the retrospect. We should have been cutthroats to do otherwise. And there's an end. "We ought to know distinctly that we are damned for what we do wrong; but when we have done right, we have only been gentlemen, after all. There is nothing to make a work about." Robert Louis Stevenson's dictum was meant for individuals, but it applies to countries too ; and it applies with appropriateness and force to New Zealand's share in the war that is now matter for serious review. That share " appears inevitable in the retrospect." We should have been traitors, virtual cut-throats, had we behaved differently. There is no call to seiiadulation, nothing to make a work about. Equally without vanity and* shame, with but the calm certitude of having done the duty whose avoidance would have been pitiful cowardice, we may look back over the years of trial. Three days after the Serajevo pistol shots that were the signal for the conflict, and three days before Great Britain declared war on Germany, our Prime Minister, speak- ! ing for the whole country, made offer of a fighting forae. Three days after that the Mother Country accepted the offer. The immediate enlistment of eager volunteers, the Arrangements for their equipment and organisation, the despatch of them under sealed orders in two troopships with the best available escort— happened within ten days of that acceptance. Before the war was a month old that " advance guard" had seized Samoa, and so taken the first decisive step in tho liberating of oppressed overseas peoples from the black tyranny of the German colonial policy. It was a hazardous enterprisethe Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau were then roaming unchecked in the Pacific; but its peril, as much as its success, set the seal of sincerity upon our little Dominion's desire to lend a helping hand in the crisis. All that followed has been worthy of that unfaltering beginning.

The record of the succeeding steps of policy and adventure is in all essentials a source of satisfaction today. The mobilisation of the Main Body of our expeditionary force proceeded apace, as the young manhood of the country pressed its services on the authorities, and there was no hesitation in giving undertaking that the full strength of the force would be maintained by reinforcements. The Rifle Brigade was formed to meet the unchecked desire to serve, and then the country, by what was virtually an act of national enlistment, accepted the Parliamentary organisation of its man-power. So there have not failed units of New Zealanderß available for any theatre of war where the great cause needed them, That from a million people, settled at the farthest bound of the British Empire, a hundred thousand men went right across the world to defend that great cause, is proof beyond denial that here loyalty had not died; and that they have been adequately ropported by money and

foodstuffs tnd general equipment is equal proof of the practical interest taken by the country's citizen population in that same cause. Into the task so suddenly confronting it the whole community flung itself with vigour. From the day of our Prime Minister's offer to the day of the signing of the armistice with the last remaining foe, there has been no reluctance of sacrifice, no slackening of endeavour. Having put its hand Ito the plough, New Zealand has never once looked back. For this achievement credit must be given alike to Parliament and people, to the Minister for Defence, who had to turn the plaything of- a peace army into a weapon of grim efficiency in an unexampled war, and to the civilian who accepted the obligation that such a tragic transformation involved. Though that credit be given, it nevertheless remains true of the part played by New Zealand as a whole that it has been but our bounden duty. Had we in the great crisis acted otherwise, enduring shame would have been our just recompense. But when we abstract from the total task the contributions that {is civilians we have made, and single out for appraisement the service of the men who have represented us on the field of battle, a fond pride fills our hearts. For ourselves there may be but calm approval, the quiet answer of a peaceful conscience: for them there is unstinted, affectionate admiration. These Men of the Fernleaf have proved their British birth. They accepted without murmur the restrictions of Trentham and the hardships of Zeitoun. They showed their mettle against the wily Turk at Suez. On Gallipoli they made a name that will be immortal. Never, so long as men have hearts, will the story of the little cove north of Gaba Tepe fail to thrill and inspire brave emulation. The advances at Cape Helles and the Daisy Patch, Chunuk Bair and Hill 60, were gallant achievements of the unconquerable soul, whatever their military value may have been. And so the brilliant story goes through all the fateful years now passed into history. On the Libyan Plateau, under the shadow of Sinai, past Jaffa into the Holy City and northward till {he Osmanli were beaten beyond hope, they played a heroic part. In France and Flanderß the Anzao tradition was magnificently sustained, as they won acknowledgment as fit to stand with the best soldiers of Europe. Flers, and Messines, and Passchendaele, and Hebuterne, found them fearless; and, when the ebb-tide turned to flood, their waves swept from Bapaume to Le Quesnoy in a series of irresistible onslaughts. Men such as they—there were many like them—have banished bestial tyranny from the earth for us and for our children, and made the world a sunnier dwelling-place even for their foes. A great host of these heroes have "gone West," leaving others to profit by their endeavours. Let the after-days of this land be full of their praise, for their valour has crowned it with glory and helped to set it, little, and remote as it is, in the radiant glow of an Empire's love.