ANZAC

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIII, Issue 9954, 25 April 1918, Page 7

ANZAC

THE DAY WE HONOUR NEW ZEALAND’S BAPTISM OF FIRE. Three years today iho men from the youngest country in the world were blooded in battle against the most fiendish oppressor (saving only bis brutal master Wilhelm) Christendom has ever known. Three years ago today did New Zealand, farthest outpost of the Empire, launch into battle her young manhood in. the cause ot Right against Might. Three years ago to-day did those young, untried soldiers, men from the bush, the mine, the desk, the plough tail, and the long, dusty drove gaze on the frowning inhospitable, almost perpendicular cliffs of that Gallipoli coast. Then it wa s that the pioneer blood showed it had .lost none of its pristine vigour. “Impraguablc,” the Hints called it; ‘impossible to land on the (least” —aye, but those men hwa th o South, Australians and New' Zealandors, achieved the impossible, and, dcspite all the vaunted impregnability, they landed. It was a glorious feat, but, like all epic deeds, through the memory of it all runs the vein ot sadness. They landed—but not all ol them. That day the people of the new lands paid toll to the jealous goddess of success. Many there were that did not reach the land; more still landed, only to fall. “It Blood oe the price of Admiralty, By God, we ha’ paid it in full.” By the right of sacrifice, by the right of achievement, by the right of those men, our mates, gone, who won imperishable glory, deathless Fame; by the right of the deeds done on that 25th of April, 1915, New Zealand takes her place amid the free nations of the world. ■Few there be that can truly claim the name Anzac. Now, day by day, the list of those “Gone West” grows, and still smaller is the roll of the survivors. Broken—battered —Forgotten —cast aside; yet: ‘ ‘The Anzacs—their number is scanty, all told, “But their name it is graven in letters of gold.” As General Sir lan Hamilton said : Before Gallipoli who had ever heard of A.N.Z.A.C.; now, who can forget it?”