CALL TO SERVE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 121, 24 May 1941, Page 10

CALL TO SERVE

SACRIFICE BY ALL .

STIRRING APPEAL

SAVING OF MANKIND

(P.A.) AUCKLAND, May 23

A stirring exhortation to New Zealanders to emulate the, selfsacrifice, of the peoples of Great Britain and Greece by making the war their individual responsibility and risking their all for victory was given by the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr. Menzies, in his speech at a civic reception in the Town Hall. The speech, which was broadcast throughout the Dominion, was loudly applauded at frequent intervals. The whole audience rose and gave him an ovation when he began and he was tumultuously cheered when he concluded.

"The outstanding feeling I have had in the past few months is that our two countries are once more linked by

imperishable tradition." said Mr, Menzies. "The Anzac tradition has been revived in this generation. I feel that as the war goes on—and long and arduous as it will be —Australians and New Zealanders will make a contribution to the cause that wi}l be worthy of themselves and their forefathers. A FOUNDATION TRUTH. "I have just made a remarkable journey, and when I reach Australia again I shall have travelled over 44,000 miles. I have seen many countries and talked to their rulers and people in authority and to ordinary people, often the more important kind of conversation. Everywhere I have been proud to realise thai the name of Australia and New Zealand soldiers stands unrivalled in the world. I say 'Australia and New Zealand' because I do not want to make any distinction. Out of all this evil good will come, and 1 hope one good thing will be that Australians and New Zealanders will think less thai the Tasman is 1200 miles wide. "I am not unaware that Australians and New Zealanders do not always admire each other or that a number of Australians occupy profitable positions in this country. However, that is a complaint which Englishmen have had against the Scots for hundreds of years. We want no political friction. "We need to get down to the foundation truth, that we are the same people. If we each think ourselves the more virtuous, that only goes to show we are the same people. We are fighting for the same cause and the same future. That our sons are sleeping their last sleep together in the soil of Greece proves to the world that we are one nation, with the same future and the same spirit." RISKING ALL FOR FREEDOM. Mr. Menzies went on to speak of the war as a struggle the course or duration of which nobody could predict, and one in which the British Empire risked its whole structure and existence for the political future of the world. "We are in the gravest peril that has ever confronted our people in the whole course of history," he continued. "These are not mere words. We are dealing with a foe who has immense resources and has at his disposal the skill of thousands of people in countries he has conquered. We face a people driven on by a diabolical spirit that has infested it for half a century. "We have to match sacrifices with more sacrifices, machines with more machines. If necessary we must put ourselves in utter servitude for the next few years so that we may live in the future not in servitude but in freedom." COURAGE IN BRITAIN. Turning to the example shown by the rank and file of the people in Britain, Mr. Menzies said what amazed him most about them was that factories in bombed industrial towns, where the work seemed to call for great concentration and the calmest of nerves, were not full of weeping, driven people, but the most cheerful factories he had ever seen. In these same towns the inhabitants had gone through cataclysmic experiences and the unidentifiable bodies of their nearest and dearest had been buried in common graves. Many of them had been poor and ill-fed, even in times of peace, but among them there was not the slightest hint of anything but indomitable courage. They were the greatest generation in the history of the race. GREEK ADVENTURE WAS RIGHT. His own first responsibility on reach. ing London, Mr. Menzies continued. was far from pleasant, one of sitting at the Cabinet table in Downing Street and considering whether the Greek adventure should be undertaken. A decision in one direction meant the loss of many lives in a righteous cause. It was taken, and rightly.

A decade ago it had been usual to think of the Greeks as an effete people and of their country as just another Balkan State, but this little people had written in history the most magnificent fighting chapter the world had seen for many a long day. Whether Britain had gone to their assistance or not, the Greeks would still have fought to the last. Now they lay broken at the feet of Germany, but not at the feet of history.

"Anyone who knows our own spirit knows we could have done only one thing," declared Mr. Menzies. "Could we have wrapped our garments about us and passed by on the other side? If, as a re-

suit of the adventure, some noble spirits, including Maoris, found themselves fighting on the slopes of Mount Olympus or in the Pass of Thermopylae, is there not a symbolism in the fact that men came from the ends of the earth in the cause of greatest moment to the sons of men all the world over?" GREATEST THING IN LIFE. In conclusion, Mr. Menzies made a ringing appeal to the individual to regard the war as his personal and individual responsibility and to ask himself, "What am I doing?" The blood of the British race, he said, had iron in it. The race was not a mob but was made up of individuals with some reserve of courage, intelligence, and resource of their own. . People who preferred private'interest to the safety of the State were traitors to the State, for the greatest private interest was to live safely when the war was over. "What matter if we come out of the war broke or in the last stages of poverty," he asked, "provided it is honourable poverty and we share it together?" (Applause.)

"Don't worry about the sacrifices you have to make. There are things in life more important than possessions, fine homes, soft furniture, and a comfortable outlook. The most important thing in Hfe is that we shall be prepared to accept crucifixion in order that mankind may be saved." (Loud applause.)