Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, OCTOBER 6, 1926. “IS IT NOTHING TO YOU?”

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LII, Issue 17157, 6 October 1926, Page 6

Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, OCTOBER 6, 1926. “IS IT NOTHING TO YOU?”

“I. hevc got to give an answer, and you will have to. give an answer. ” These words of the lit. Hon. Stanley • Baldwin, Prime Minister of Great Britain, .might serve ns the text of a lay sennori' to', the people of the Empire. ■ The Prime Minister was speaking to the - boys of Harrow school. It was his own school, and he was speaking with that simplicity and noble generosity which are characterisin' of his public utterances. Mr. Baldwin reminded the Harrow boys of the present generation that their forerunners of twelve years ago had to make a certain decision. He thought that if the- generation of lfi.ll could send a message across the years to the generation of 1926 it would be in the words of Socrates, when he heard sentence of death passed upon him: “And now the time is come for us to go our ways; I to death and you to life; but which of us hath the better lot is known lo none but God.” Death was easy, but life was very hard. And in the light of all that had come and gone since those Harrow boys of twelve years ago had gone their way —some to life, but so many to doath —there was, said the Prime Minister, a question to answer, for those who had been spared alive out of the pit' of war; for those who had come after. It was a question which the dead might ask: “Have we died in vain?” It was a question which the living must answer. “T have got to give an answer,” said Stanley Baldwin; “.you will have to give an answer.” Mr. Baldwin’s thesis was that the tasks confronting the living of this age, the decisions to be made by the citizens of this generation, wore tasks as imperative as, and decisions more difficult than those undertaken and made by the men who had fallen in the Great War. They were, for that generation and this, the tasks and the decisions of citizenship. Mr. Baldwin was speaking to his own people in England in his own outspoken way. But if he was speaking to the citizens of Now Zealand or any other part of the Empire ho could not say other than this that they should dedicate themselves to the task of making the nation worthy of that immortal sacrifice. There is a shaft of stone in a Canadian city, retired to the memory of the men who made the supreme Sacrifice. It bears the simple inscription: “Is it nothing to you?” The words should burn into the consciences of men and stir up the depths of their patriotism. There is need for the display of patriotic impulse today. Britain quite definitely is “up against it” in respect to the industrial situation. Some of her industries' have got into an almost desperate plight. Sir George Hunter, a leading shipbuilder, in a letter written to the Prime Minister a few weeks ago said: “The trade balance of imports and exports is now quite definitely against us. Dividends on bur railways and in most of our industries are being paid out of reserves, or have ceased. Capital which is needed to maintain our industries and provide wages is dwindling. These conditions, if they continue. can only mean bankruptcy and ruin. That stage is still perhaps far off, but we are on the road to it. There is no improvement in sight. The mining question is not the only and is not" even at this moment the most, important. The future of the whole country (and the whole Empire) is at stake. Our shipping trade is becoming more and more depressed, and a large proportion of our ships are laid up. Our iron and steel trades are largely idle and their men unemployed;’ most of the British, shipbuilding yards aro closed, or being closed. The engineering and shipbuilding work wo need and expected is gone to Germany, Holland, France, Italy, and Scandinavia. Our textile industries are not fully employed. Forty per cent, of shipyard workers are unemployed. The wages of skilled men in shipyards are considerably lower than miners’ wages, and the wages of ordinary day laborers are 40 per cent, less than miners’ wages." This doleful outlook may be changed at any time by the settlement of the coal strike and the revival of industry. Not all the leaders of industry art- so gloomy regarding the prospects as Sir George Hunter, but there is without doubt a great amount, of anxiety. And .0 behoves us in the Dominions to rallv to the help of the Motherland. \s is nothing to us that England is enduring great stress in her industrial life —England, our homeland, Dumbest customer for our products, the fumncial source of most ol our enterpriseV Therefore we should by all means in our power endeavor to help England. If the, purchase of a British made hat, o- braces, or toothbrush or motor car will help to do so—and in the aggregate such help may be great—then let ns make it a rule to buy British woods, to bring patriotism into business, and thereby do nil in our power to build up a strong and self-support-ing Empire.