AN APPEAL TO PATRIOTISM

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2505, 5 July 1915, Page 4

AN APPEAL TO PATRIOTISM

In another column we publish an article written by Sir Joseph Car : ruthers and published in Australia, in which a strong appeal is made to political party leaders to sink their differences and unite in a great effort to enable Australia to accomplish its full share in defence of tho liberties of the Empire. It is a stirring and a convincing appeal. It brushes aside'the pettiness arid tho littleness of party_ warfare, the narrow divisions which separate the .country into sections quarrelling and disputing over trifles, and ; places before the people of Australia in a plain and forcible fashion the bigger things in the life of a nation. In fact the very life of the nation—the right to live as a nation. The arguments advanced by Sir Joseph Carruthers are peculiarly appropriate, in some respects, to the condition of things in New Zealand at the present time. It is true that we nave advanced a stage beyond that reached in Australia. Here the political party in office has. held out the olive branch to its opponents and expressed its readiness to cooperate and form a National Ministry, composed of members of the present Government and the present Opposition. It is what Sir Joseph Carruthers urges with such convincing logic the political leaders of the Commonwealth to do. But here as there, unhappily, ithcre are people incapable of realising the greatness of tho issue at stake and anxious to maintain within the nation even while it is struggling for its life those elements of sectional discord which assist to handicap and weaken it in its efforts against the enemy outside its gates. Somo of these people, for instance, can see in the offer so frankly made by the Pruie Minister nothing more than a device to score an advantage over the Opposition. They cannot see tho sacrifice it entails nor can they, blinded as they are by party or personal considerations, appreciate tho gain to the country which may be expected from Ministers being freed from the embarrassment of. party warfare, and thus enaMed to concentrate their whole energies on the task of assisting to the utmost of New Zealand's power in defeating the powerful and implacable enemy who threatens us overseas. No one can read the appeal made by Sir Joseph Carruthers without realising tho folly—tho criminal folly—of missing any chance of strengthening ,our\position to meet the struggle which 1 still lies ahead. Few can read it without feeling how small —how contemptibly small—are party wrangles and . scheming at such _ a time while our sons are daily giving up their lives for us at the Dardanelles and whilo tho fata of the nation is at stake in the bloodiest and most terrific war the world has ever witnessed. What docs it matter whether the Reform Party or the Ward Party gains some_ political advantage from a Coalition for the period of the war so long as the sinking of all. party differences enables us to press forward . more unitedly and moro effectively in the life and death struggle in which we are engaged]