The Need for a National Reserve

Horowhenua Chronicle, 23 April 1915, Page 3

The Need for a National Reserve

4 (Contributed). Can anyone in his heart say: "This our war is over. Vfo have already won. Danger to ourselves is a tiling of the past?" True, the chances are that this is indeed so, and nothing but a triumphal progress lies between the Allies anu peace. But there are also chances the other way and we would be indeed fools in our blindness did we not see and prepare for them. Suppose an evil star arise over us or our trials were judged insufficient as yet to cleanse and purify the national spirit and supposo wo suffered a great reverse or scries ol reverses 011 sea or land? Would not then tho call conic clear and unavoidable for every man to drop his tools anil fight for his liberty and for his loved ones? "Would he rather deliver this fair land to the fate of Belgium—himself a miserable slave under the iron heel of German despotism, and his loved ones given over to German savagery and lust? Nothing is clearer now than that our modern civilisation is hut a thin cloak to primaeval man, and that now as ever ho will fight to the death for what ho holds or for what lie covets. This civilisation has but added another cause. fur now lie will also figlit simply for an idea with no hope of personal reward but suffering and death. And the world has now seen that he will fight tor this newest cause with tenfold the ferocity that ho would for the others. Should we dofeat Germany, who can say that a year will not find us fighting one or all of our present Allies and Germany as well? Nothing buf our power—our willingness to mnke sacrifices to our ideal of empire—can preserve us. Our old comfortable belief that a New Zealand er with a -rifle was equal to any number of miserable foreigners ha.? gone for ever, and we now realise that long training is essential to fit a man for modern warfare however good the original material.

It has long been the belief of the Germans—a belief that was one of the causes of the war—that we TJritons were grown too indolent and unpatriotic to make any real sacrifice in defence of our oasily-won empire. To the German who—willingly and not by force —gave of his best years wholly that he might learn to uphold Tiis Fatherland in time of need, our boasts of patriotism and attachment to the Motherland seemed by lip service ; hollow and futile when seen in the ligliL of our actual sacrifices on her altai. To him it seemed that a people who paid others to perforin the essential national duty that they were too selfindulgent to perform themselves were obviously ripe for their downfall.

We have perhaps saved ourselves by a tremendous effort to make good those years spent in idleness and by the help of powerful Allies, but hat! we met Germany single-handed who could have foretold the result. Surely we voters, who have decreed that our successors shall not mature in unfitness, shall ourselves shoulder some of the burden and do what we can to serve our country. For us the National Reserve has been established and surely no man can reconcile with his conscience a refusal to give that one hour of his leisure in the week which its service demands.