National Defence

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 43, 24 October 1907, Page 9

National Defence

A West Coast correspondent comments as follows upon our article on volunteering in last issue :— ' Why encourage militarism ? There is no prospect of invasion in anything like the near future. And in any event, should the need arise, New Zealand would rise as one man against the foe '. New Zealand might, indeed, ' rise as one man '. But it would rise, not as a skilled and disciplined army, but as a more or less arired rabble. And even armed mobß have long ago ceased to. be formidable on ' the field of fame, fresh and gory '• We do not suggest conscription, with its dangers of barracß-life, nor the other things that are usually understood by the term • militarism '.. But' we recognise, none the less, the need of national defence, of reasonable preparedness, and the fact that men are not trained in a few days, or even a few weeks, to the use of modern weapons and modern methods of war —nor even to the more • elementary arts of fisticuffs" or the • savate '. Hence the benison which we bestowed upon the"volunteer and cadet movements. International crises, too, develop quickly nowadays. The motto runs •— 1 Thrice is he blest that hath his quarrel just, But four times b/lest that gets his blow in fust. And woe to Mm that is unprepared when the stranger sits before his gates. Aesop of old conveyed the lesson of national defence in Eis Fable of the Wild Boar and the Fox :—: — ' A wild Boar stood under a tree, and rubbed his tusks against tRe trunk.. A Fox passing by asked him why fie thus sharpened his teeth when there was no danger threatening from either huntsman or hound. He replied : " I do it advisedly ; for it would never do

to have to sharpen my weapons just at the time I ought, to be using them ".' And the moral of the story is this : ' To be well prepared for war is the best guarantee of peace '.