The Waikato Times With which is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1921. AFTER SEVEN YEARS

Waikato Times, Volume 94, Issue 14767, 5 October 1921, Page 4

The Waikato Times With which is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1921. AFTER SEVEN YEARS

Seven years have elapsed since the nation rose to its greatest hour. As it never can be ignored without unfaith or disparaged without folly, so it 'never can be well remembered and honoured without bringing back some of its moral and practical strength. That is what Britain will yet regain (says the Observer). She must regain it before other things can be surely added unto us. Eloquence of itself, even were it that of Pericles, can no longer serve us, and on human emotion we shall make no call. Our business is to draw the real moral from experience, as all wise men from time to time must attempt- Seven years have always been accounted a marked span in individual life —sometimes as a main measure or classic metre in the rhythm of human life as a whole. The scientists tell us that in seven years, while some mystery of form keeps our shapes more or less the same, every atom and particle of our substance is changed. We might also at this moment say the same of all the world's condition, physical and mental. It is altered utterly. The world will never again be in any sort the same. It can be better if we will it so. Without that will it must continue to bo worse. Into seven years since August, 1914, have been crowded achievements, catastrophes, revelations, and vicissitudes in a tremendous sweep and turmoil of events such as were never known before except to successive generations or exceptional centuries. "Wo live in thoughts not years—• in deeds not breaths—in actions, not in figures on a. dial." Historically all those nT us who survive have lived in thai, sense, far more than our sharethan in others —ai which we shall not pause to analyse—(here is a tacit a.cToemcni to forget the war. On the other hand, the Cenotaph in Whitehall, one of the nobler symbols in the world, has always about it a little crowd of humble persons: and others, though not all, do not fail to lift their hats ae tiles pass by. We

all know in face of this daily spectacle \vhat is the trrcator side of the contrast. We all know in our hearts that remembrance is not only deeper and j stronger than oblivion, but wiser as a source of present energy and vision. What is needed next Is to escape absolutely and once for all from anything like a moral surrender to what is called disillusionment. Throughout the world there has been unexampled disillusionment. The ruins of former things stand broken and stark on every hand. The disappointment of hopes, social and international, is immeasurableWe all feel this ,and its consequence. We feel them in the spirit and the flesh. Taxation is a spur where conscience fails. But we must bend our minds the more to remedies, not regrets. If we are to devise and apply the right remedies, we must attribute the universal malady of the peace to the right causes. We must shun like death the creeping paralysis of the thought that the war itself was not worth while. The ignominious and barren mood is that of recantation. Wonderful was the struggle made by Germany prepared. More wonderful the struggle made by Britain unprepared. We could not have saved a world of freedom alone and without France But without us that world of freedom never could have been saved by all the other efforts of mankind. If we return to the inspiration of that remembrance, it will lift us again and again. No; the fault was not in the war itself. Neither that, nor the manner of waging it and winning it on our side was the chief cause of our present disillusionments and difficulties. The fault lay wholly in the mistaken and unlucky handling of the problems of peace both at home and abroad. We in this country did not wage the war in order to do to the Germans what the Germans, if successful, would have done to us. We waged it to establish a higher thing—a saner order of international justice. What conflict had destroyed in Europe only co-operation between 'former enemies could restore. Here we reach the moral for our own country. Seven years after, we ask ourselves how shall we win the peace? There is an answer, but the answer depends on remembrance, not on oblivion- We are on the right lines, and only then, when weask ourselves another question. How did we win the war? Before Armageddon we were torn by party and social dissensions. But for them and the constant spectacle and temptation they presented to the Germans the catastrophe might never have happened. In August, 1914, our saving miracle was wrought when the unity of the nation was achieved. But we not only won toy willingness to pull together. We were united indeed as In modern times we had never been united. We worked as we had never worked. We organised as we had never organised. We proved that on these great termsl nothing is impossible to our peoplor True that we spent money like wp.tcr as we never can afford to do again- But that was the inevitable Nenaosis of unpreparedness. That was the penalty of want of organisation beforehand. A return to the supreme war lessons of unity, work, and organisation will yet win the peace, nor will it ever be won by other means.