EDITORS AT THE FRONT.

Colonist, Volume LX, Issue 14869, 18 September 1918, Page 7

EDITORS AT THE FRONT.

INSPHIING MESSAGE FROM MR

PIRANI

(United Press Association.)

WeSiington, September 16. . The following message has been received from Mr. F. Pirani, one of the pr#ss delegates visiting Britain at the invitation of the Imperial authorities:

London, September 13. The eclitorial mission returned to London to-day after an extensive tour of Franco and Flanders. The New Ze.ilanrl delegates a.nd, indeed, the whole party of overseas editors have been greatly . impressed by what they were privileged to see and to learn on and behind the historic Western front. We have seen the great v/ar machine working at high pressure,, a marvel of stupendous and complicated organisation, running with seemingly miraculous smoothness and preci^on.We havo seen our splendid men at work, talked with them ahout their experiences, listened with delight to their eagerly told tales of some other fellow's divuntloss valour —never by aiw chance do they enthuse about what they themselves have' done—-and discovered renewed inspiration in their cheerful optimism. Here and, there in tho semi-eoiifideritlal ]>rivacy of mess room or billet one heard whispers of sins ■of omission and commission, stories of somebody's alleged blunders, but these are matters which, if they do not lack foundation in fact, must bo left to b<> washed up after'the Avar. Meanwhile they are but incidents, more or less inevitable happenings in tho world-redeeming enterprise to which we have set our hands.

When we left New Zealand the Hun was shaking his mailed fist at a threatened Paris, and making the world gasp lest by his prodigal onslaught he should wrest the long coveted Channel ports from the heroic defenders The, spring carnival of slaughter was in full swing, and the issue was ! still in doubt. What has happened iin the interim you m New Zealand jknofw. Our gallant troops have sprung I from the defensive to the offensive-. They have swept hack the Huns,, and arc still pushing forward. Thousands upon thousands of prisoners caged behind the Allies' lines testify to the ; success of their heroic operations. Paris the Beautiful is still undisturbed capital of La Belle ' France, the Channel ports still fly the Allied flags, America, has continued to make good, Britain still rules', the waves, .and the end, though not yet, is nearer than—but there, I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet. This, though, I can say, for it is writ large' on all we have seen: Unto us is to be tho victory. Everywhere, in the base camps, in the billets, behind the lines, in the battered and Wood-stained .trenches, on the crowded roads, everywhere amid this welter of Wood and pain, aye, even in the "hospitals, en the wan, drawn faces of the bnttletorn heroes, it is written: Unto -Uc> is to be the victory. Why:' Because the salvation of humanity and the preservation of deiiKK.Tftcy demands it, because right must prevail over, might, because, despite our national sins and shortcomings, we are in this fight on the side of God, and under His almighty captaincy defeat is unthinkable. No man could walk over the ground hallowed' "by the life of our dearest kinsfolk without being touched by the overwhelming sadness of it all. War from near at hand looks so terribly difl: ereuv It is frightful, it is ghastly, yet it is wonderfully and awfully grand. It calls to the imagination the •soul-stirring harmony of the' Dead March as it might be played l)y a thousand mighty bands, followed by the Glory Song as sung by all the sons of men'in uni.-ior. with the countless choirs of Heaven. That is why we editors have come back from the Western front with the song of victorj' on our iips. We have been where tilings petty and little pnle into insigniiicazico. ivhore only tho one big thing counts, where " the brotherhood of man welded, in the furnace of pain and suffering nti-d?. its. fullest "and truest expression, and where in the inscrutable wisdom of the Omnipotent there is being worked out a new and ■better order of things.

Our message to you all is: "Carry on? All will bo'well."