SEVENTEEN YEARS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21165, 23 April 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

SEVENTEEN YEARS.

ANZAC AND AFTERMATH.

BY ELSIE K. MORTON,

A motor-car passed slowly down Queen Street last Monday evening, just a week before Anzac Day. A white-haired woman leaned forward, peering through the windows to see more closely the strange and shameful sight—windows cracked and splintered, windows with great jagged holes gleaming beneath the electric lights, windows covered completely with sheets of corrugated iron or barricaded with heavy planks. For a moment, she was dumb with amazement; her mouth twitched, as though she were going to cry, and a look of infinite distress and pain came into her eyes. " So this is what wo have conic to," she said at last, and her voice trembled. " This is all education and civilisation have been able to do for our people." She said no more. But through her silence, tense, poignant, I seemed to hear tho weeping of the mothers, all the white-haired, ageing mothers, who for seventeen long years have tried to believo their dear sons lay dead at Anzac so that tho world might bo made a safer, better place for sons and daughters of the next generation.

And looking again at that sinister line of broken, boarded windows, a wave of uttermost sadness and desolation swept across my heart also . . . all tho burning anger and resentment were drowned in an overwhelming sense of sheer grief and shame that such things could be in Auckland City within a week of Anzac Day. . . .Years ago u great preacher said, " A nation with Anzac in its history can never die." He was right, but that nation can be—it has been — humbled to the dust in tho eyes of tho great outer world. Seventeen years ago the men of Anzac woko within their country a new, proud sense of nationhood. The eyes of the world were upon us-, liecause of the valour and splendour of that great and tragic enterprise. Even in the midst of sorrow there came a healing sense of the greatness and glory of what New Zealand men had done, those lads just stepping across the threshold of youth into man's estate, upon whose young lives the gold and sable gates were so soon to close for ever. ... « Rosemary and Laurel. For seventeen years we have woven the wreaths of rosemary and laurel, remembrance and glory. Once again, 011 Monday, the be]ls will toll, silver trumpets will sound the Last Post, and Queen Street will echo to the sound of marching feet, the feet of the comrades of the men who will never come back. Down (hat same street, long years ago, they marched too, (lie men who lie dead at Anzac, in France, in desert wastes and at the bottom of the sea. And every Anzac Day they march once more with their dear comrades, n great invisible army, not dead, but living once again in the hearts of those whose love can never die.

Once again they will march up the street to the sound of music, but it will no longer be the street they knew . . . no longer a street of honour, but a. street of shame, bearing still the outward visible sign of that outbreak of the same evil forces of lawlessness and violence as sot the world aflame seventeen years ago. We thought we had done with all that; such things might happen in an old, unhappy world where crime and poverty and degradation breed disloyalty and disorder, but not in this, our country, so richly blessed, so free, and so bountifully supplied with all man's primary needs. Fires of Savagery.

Yet the fires of primitive savagery leaped up through the veneer of civilisation. Men, and women too, to (heir everlasting shame be it said, forgot such things as decency and honour and good citizenship existed; they smashed and thieved and looted, and the word of their lawlessness flashed across the world, and brought shame upon our hard-won nationhood. These things will not be forgotten by loyal New Zealanders; they may be forgiven, for man indeed must forgive as he hopes to be forgiven, but the wound will take long to heal. 1 here is sore need for us to remember the lesson of Anzac in these critical days. The first impulse that conies as a result of that outbreak of disorder is one of retaliation, a closing of the heart to the urgent claims which inevitably will be made this coming winter for relief of distress among the unemployed. We know that it was not the unemployed who thus disgraced New Zealand, but in the long run it is they who will have to suffer in expiation. Their need to-day is as great, even greater than ever. They are our own people, the sons and brothers, wives and sisters, of < lie men of Anzac. They are walking a dark and dangerous road, and their leaders hold the torch by which their footsteps arc directed. A Madman's Torch. Seventeen years ago r a madman's torch was lit and flung, and the blaze of it filled the world, and a million lives were seared and blasted, a million hearts were broken, a •million homes made desolate. Verily " how great a matter a little fire kindleth !"

Tho little fire has once more been kindled. Now let us stamp it out, once and for all. Let us strike down the serpent of disloyalty that has raised its ugly head in our midst, and trace to it? source the undercurrent of venom that has poisoned the springs of good citizenship and threatened the stream of national life.

And having first of all dono these things, let us take the lesson of Anzac to our hearts. In the sacred flaino of remembrance, let all personal thoughts of bitterness and wrath he burned away. We have suffered much, we, whose hearts have borne the sorrow of Anzac, but tho men of Anzac suffered more. They died, not even knowing if tho world would ever hear how or why they died. Can wo do less than livo for the cause for which they laid down their lives?

Anzac has been written down in tho history of the world war as a " glorious failure." War has not yet ceased; the forces of evil and tyranny and hate are a? rampant now as they were seventeen years ago. Let us marshal against them the forces of the spirit, asking first of all forgiveness for all our negligence of God and His commandments, then girding ourselves for battle with those primary causes of all world wars, " hatred, evil, and all uncharitableness," so that our Anzac conflict end this time not in failure, but in glorious triumph.