The Hastings Standard Published Daily SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 1897. THE NATION'S THANKSGIVING.

Hastings Standard, Issue 357, 26 June 1897, Page 2

The Hastings Standard Published Daily

SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 1897. THE NATION'S THANKSGIVING.

For the cause that lacks assistance. For the wrongs that need resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

After a week of universal rejoicing the Nation is settling down. From the North Cape to the Bluff, in every city, hamlet, or settlement in Australasia, as in every other part of the British Empire, a nation's song of thanksgiving has been heard. We have walked in procession, sung Te Deums and National Anthems; we have lit bonfires and made pyrotechnic displays; we have done all things by which a nation can express its feelings of loyalty, patriotism, and thankfulness, and who will deny us the right to enthuse and rejoice. The sixtieth anniversary of the Queen's reign serves as the mile-stone from which we can take a retrospective view and faintly realise the immense forward strides we have made. The blundering nation of shopkeepers has steadily stepped out, spreading peace in all directions. The condition of the nation itself must be of a high order to succeed where even within recent years other nations ha%"e ignominiously failed. The British nation appears to be destined by the inscrutable laws of heaven to be the colonising nation, and what impartial judge looking to the colonies that have been established will be able to do otherwise than credit the British with success. Mistakes there have been; but John Bull's mistakes somehow in the end prove a blessing in disguise. The thanksgiving and rejoicing of this week may be looked upon as the nation's tribute to itself through the symbol which unites the outposts of the great Empire. The event, however, does not cease with that. It will no doubt draw more tightly the crimson thread of kinship which binds the colonists to the Motherland. It is a great Empire-consolidating event, and its effects must be left to the future to determine; in the present we can see nothing but good from such consolidation. If we are to b« citizens of a great Empire, if we are to remain the leading nation in the world, then we must recognise that we owe certain duties and that heavy responsibilities r.-st upon us. The" ethics of Empire demand that we recognise that the nation of to-day stmds ia the position of trustees towards ps terity. It is our bouaden duty to

maintain the territorial dimensions of the Empire, and to preserve the highest and best traditions of the nations. We must band over our trust to our children intact, or rather with such improvements as it is possible for us to make. A magazine writer illustrates this point finely when he says : " This one living generation of British men and British women, who now walk this world's stage, does not constitute the whole British people. Far back into the past, and, surely, far forward into the future, the chain, of which we are but one link, extends. Inheritors of a mighty trust, we are bound by the whole course of our history, up to now, to pass it on, inviolate, to those w 7 ho shall follow. For ages past, the labor of dead generations has been building up the house of the British nation." To sustain this mighty Empire, to keep inviolate this great trust, imposes a serious responsibility on us, and we are thereby reminded that unity is strength, and the event of Tuesday last tends tow r ards union. Unity is strength, but resting on the adage-will not serve our purpose: we must be prepared to do more. It is conceivable, and indeed it has occurred, that in the pursuance of the duty assigned to the nation our path should be crossed by some rival State. What then would be the necessity laid "upon the British people ? Manifestly we should sweep the obstruction away from the path, and here again we turn to the magazine writer, who says: " Viewed from this standpoint it will be seen that the adequate maintenance of the national armaments is not merely a vital need, prompted by the strongest conceivable motives of selfinterest, but also, in very truth, a high and sacred obligation of morality. Not to heed that obligation means that we are ready lightly to lay aside the work which constitutes the chief justification for our existence as a people amongst mankind. It means that we are contemners of the past, that we are faithless to our charge, that we j are as fraudulent life - tenants with regard to our heirs. First of all duties because the primary condition of the fulfilment of all duties, is the obligation of self-defence." The defence of the Empire will be, we think, the principal effect of this week's pageants and rejoicings. In providing for that adequate defence we will have to make sacrifices; but it is hardly possible that we in this far off colony will shirk our duty, whatever sacrifice it may involve.