"BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE"

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2566, 14 September 1915, Page 4

"BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE"

Exception is taken by our evening contemporary to the contention put forward, in our article of Saturday ?i" xr e D £ ns F of Fixec( Ideas" that New Zealand could send forward, and should send forward, larger drafts of troops than she is doing tinder the present programme. In the column of spacc devoted by the 1 ost to its defence of our present scale of contribution to the cause of the Allies, not one new point is raised, and the arguments used are largely a rehash of '.hose loug since made familiar in the tpcoches of the Minister of Defence. Wc quoted figures, based on the statements of Mb. Massey and Mr. Allen in Parliament on August 4 and 20 respectively, showing our proposed contribution of men .in two years of war. The Post takes exception to these and provides another set from an unspecified source, making tho total 52,000 men, as against i 8,700 stated by us. Even if the new figures are tho correct ones, can it !?u Eer j° usl y contended for a moment that- tho additional 3UQO men represents tho utmost we can do 1 The Post urges us to hold back r nnu for reinforcements two years hence. But can this advice be reconciled with Lord Kitchener's urgent call to the Empire on July 9 to dovelop its military resources to the "utmost limit"; with his request to Australia for every available man "with or without equipment"; with Mr. Asquith's statement on June 19 that the "united effort of every man" is needed; or with Mr. Lloyd George's plain warning this morning that "it is essential that the Allfes should put forth their whole strength before, it h too late. Anything else must lead to defeat" 1 We regret that our contemporary cannot see eye-to-eye with its on this very important matter. But the facts are plain. ■ The call, uttered by those in the highest authority in the Empire, is for every man, and fcr those men at the earliest possible moment. 'To our contemporary and all who would urge us to delay our effort and to put off till to-morrow what wo should be doing to-day, wc would again recall those words of Lord Kitchener with which we closed our article' on Saturday: —

"Excuses are often very plausible and very arguable, and seem quite good until'we examine them by the light of duty before the tribunal of our conscience. ... Be sure that hereafter, when you look back upon to-day and its call to duty, you do not have cause—perhaps bitter cause —to confess to your conscience that you shirked your duty to your country and sheltered yourself under a mere excuse."