LOOK OUT!

Observer, Volume XXXVI, Issue 38, 27 May 1916, Page 2

LOOK OUT!

We're Coming!

THERE are thirty-fire million soldiers fighting in the great war. New Zealand has had the great honour of being allowed to supply about 30,000 men to join the British Army of three million five hundred thousand men. Britain would have fought the Avar without fuss if New Zealand had not been peopled with British folk, and would have carried on every operation with, determination and ultimate success if New Zealand had never existed. One does not in the least blame the New Zealander who has never been out of New Zealand for believing that the Empire could not

be saved but by levies on New Zealand, for it is a very creditable thing to believe that one's own flesh and blood makes the superman. We have shown the national characteristic in our belief that the great Grallipoli campaign was solely a New Zealand matter, and in celebrating an event in which British, Indian, French, Australian and Aew Zealand troops were engaged as "Anzac" Day. We have not yet, in short, the smallest Imperial outlook. There are grown men in New Zealand who were told by their teachers that "New Zealand won the South African war," the real fact being that New Zealand papers so carefully pander to these sort of beliefs that the people must be excused for feeling that the weary old earth never wakes up until colonial people prod it.

Mr E. Ashmead-Bartlett, who left rsew Zealand the other day, very mildly pointed out the national characteristic when he said that, as far as New Zealand was concerned, there was nothing really doing in France until our soldiers got there. Believe us, the New Zealand soldier m the field isn't suffering from swelled luted "to the extent that his stay-at-home relative is. He is learning a deep and lasting respect for the British soldier, the man who has plodded along and done his plain job without the journalistic screeches that follow every act of the men of our own land. The New Zealand soldier will presently obtain the view that he is not called on to •save the Empire because the Empire can't be saved without him, but is being allowed to pay for the privilege he enjoys under the British flag by making a tithe of the sacrifice his fellow soldier of Britain, France, and Russia is doing at three or four times the pay. It is perhaps natural that the people of a small, sparsely settled country should on occasions believe: (1) That England is a place occasionally patronised by New Zealand footballers;'(2) that South Africa is the place that was added to the British Crown by New Zealand troops; and (3) that the Gallipoli campaign was solely a New Zealand affair.

The failure to grasp the terrific extent of the campaign is a failure of perspective and education. For instance, a while ago, there was a children's gala at the Domain. It was largely attended. To this writer a typical Auckland lady said: "It was splendid! There were over a million children in the Domain I" , New Zealand people who do not realise what the great war is might -begin to grasp the smallness of New Zealand's help by realising that there are single towns in England which have sent more men to the colours than the whole of NewZealand has done, that mere municipalities handle larger affairs than the New Zealand.Ministry, and that the French artillery and the French infantry are not only the best of their kind on earth but are the patterns for all armies. If this war does what one hopes it will do, it will do away with the rather despicable characteristic of regarding everybody outside our own country as "inferior." We hiave as yet received no letters from the trenches patronising the British soldier and acknowledging tlhe French "poilu" to be almost a fit companion for "us colonial giants." We may even hear before very long that the enemy is a fighting man. One of the nicest things ever done by the New Zealand soldier was his acknowledgment that the Turk was a devil to fight.

France was not specially invented to be saved by vs 3 and it would' have been saved if we hadn't left the shop, the plough (and the Parliament). Our feeling should not be that the Empire is jolly lucky to , have us to save it, but that we are deeply honoured in being permitted to take a small part in the preservation of our liberties. The chief reason for the intolerable swank is thepersistence of the newspapers in beslavering men who don't want to b&

beslavered at the expense of about 15 million other" soldiers of the Allies who are bearing much greater sacrifices and doing work of exactly the same kind. Our point of view is to the effect that Balkan States possessing many millions of people are of no consequence—but wait until Invercargill spits on its hands! Kipling didn't mean us, perhaps, when he prayed: "From frantic boast and foolish word— Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord."