SALUTE TO ANZAC

Taranaki Daily News, 23 April 1932, Page 11 (Supplement)

SALUTE TO ANZAC

CHALICE OF COURAGE

A.T.B.)

(By

Stand to Attention there I The Men are passing by, A Spirit Host of: men who boast A name that cannot die. With hush’d attention stand! They pass, with silent tread— . For how they fought, and all they wrought, Salute the Living Dead. Stand to Attention now— With high resolve to own. The Anzac creed in Anzac deed. And not by word alone. What is this Anzac creed? Purpose and courage strong, A valiant guest of all that s best, And kindling, hate of wrong. When the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed upon the shell swept shores of Gallipoli, climbed the impossible-looking heights frowning above them, and wrenched from the Turks an entrenched position where the enemy thought themselves impregnable, they gave to history a shining story of invincible courage, that ranks forever with the noblest deeds of endurance and valour that illuminate its pages. The first letters of its corporate name, A.N.Z.A.C., gave a new word to our and a new red-letter day to our calendar under the Southern Cross. As the anniversary of that Great Landing comes round each year we salute the. heroism, of the men who made it immortal. Some of these men are with us still, and for that day’s deeds we give them honour, and remember the debt we owe them. 'Some returned, and lingered awhile amongst us with maimed. limbs and shattered health, before answering the final call to join their comrades who had gone before. The rest, like Rupert Brooke, have made some corner of a foreign field a part of their Homeland; they have consecrated its earth with richer dust concealed, and now, all evil shed away, a pulse in the Eternal Mind, no ■ less, they , give back the thoughts their Homeland gave, (her grace of frank unfearing manliness, her open love of daring, her pride of truth and right they caU fair play, and all the deathless birthright of her freedom. On this day, and all days of their remembrance, we hold holy communion with the ever living dead, we are fortified for our own battle in life ■by the bread of their endurance and refreshed from the chalice of their unconquerable courage. Above the entrance to the War Memorial at Auckland there is an inscription from the famous funeral oration of Pericles over the brave sons of Greece who fell in the first year of the Spartan war. Let us quote from the same oration words that are less known but no less worthy:— “The sacrifice of their lives, which we mourn this day, has for some of them been the first'.'revelation of the heroism that was in them; for all it has been the final confirmation thereof. Some of them were wealthy—the lure of riches made no heart' falter: some of them looked to become wealthy—none flinched from peril by reason of the hope of good days to be. The task they set themselves was to smite our foes. They had turned their backs on old dreams of success in life; it was the hour f'br deeds. Iu the midst of death they held it a nobler thing, to fight and fall than to flinch and live. Worthy were they of their country who proved their manhood thus. If victory was denied them, did they fail their fatherland? Not one! They laid those bright,‘ gallant lives at her feet. In one great host did they give themselves to death; but each one, man by man, has won imperishable praise, each has gained a- glorious grave, not the sepul- . chre of earth where they lie, but the living tomb of everlasting remembrance wherein their glory is enshrined, remembrance that will live on the lips : and blossom in the deeds of their countrymen the world over.” In the spirit of these words we approach the Anzac commemoration. Time has softened the poignancy of our first sorrows. We no longer gaze upon a bloody and battered field of carnage, nor yet upon rugged and desolate hills where our dead sleep. The seed of their sacrifice was .not sown in vain. We behold to-day the growing harvest. Wo have had time to cease from weeping and lift up our eyes upon the inheritance they bequeathed to us.-. Being dead they yet speak to us.. Being gone they yet- return and our hearts burn with great resolves and high hopes as they walk with us in august companionship, and. as of old, they are known to us in the breaking of bread, for they come closer to us and are most known to us when we admit into our ? own lives the consecrating spirit of ■ their singleminded courage and sacrifice. As Lincoln said at the dedication of Gettysburg—“ln a larger sense we cannot dedicate this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who . struggled here have consecrated it far our poor poiver to add or detract. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far nobly advanced—that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion.” It is about a hundred years since the Corn Law Rhymer, Ebenezer Elliot, stung by the contrast between the opulence of the rich and the desolation of the poor, stirred the nation with his songs of passionate democracy;

When wilt Thou save the people O God of mercy, when Not kings and lords, but nations! Not thrones and crowns, but men! Flowers of Thy heart, O God. are they, Let them not pass like weeds, away— Their heritage a sunless day, God save the people!

Shall crime bring crime forever, Strength aiding still the strong Is it Thy will, O Father, That man shall toil for wrong “No,” say Thy mountains, “No,” Thy.skies; Man’s clouded sun shall brightly rise, And songs ascend instead of sighs, God Save the people!

Aud the deep diapason of that “No” still reverberates from our mountains and the high clarion of our skies still calls us, to deny the vested rights of empurpled wrong. The - memories of Anzac should .not end with the “Last Post,” but begin again in a new, invigorated and -gallant dedication of ourselves to the cause that lacks assistance. to the wrong that needs resistance, and the good that we can do to make in the desert a highway for our God,-, whereby the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain. ■_