THE CHALLENGE OF THE DEAD.

Hokitika Guardian, 31 August 1921, Page 3

THE CHALLENGE OF THE DEAD.

In “The Challenge of the Dead” Mr Stephen Graham describes a pilgrim age to the battlefields of the Western front. He bids ns “follow the many who ran in the great torch race of the war,when the spent runner Handed the torch fro mhis hand to another, who in turn ran with it blazing till lie fell, time from Zebrugge to Ypres; from Ypreis, flaming, to Nerve Ohapelle, from Neuve Ohapelle to Loos, I then aflame to the defence of the salient; theft a long blaze to the sevcntfold altar of the Somme . . . man to man, unit to unit period to period, til] Hie November when the race was won.” Fn his company we review many poignant memories and visit many and varied scenes. Here, where men once grappled and died in a shambles, kindly nature has covered all traces of the struggle with a catiopy of green; there we hear the busy hum of reconstruction; there.; again the Shattered countryside lies desolate and forlorn. Everywhere there are crosses, the graves of the dead, who silently challenge the living to prove worthy of their sacrifice, Mr Graham conjures up the vision of a vast cosmopolitan cemtery stretching from the Channel to Switzerland. Friend lies beside foe, all enmity forgotten. There 1 are French and British, Australians and Germans. Portuguese and negroes 1 from Africa, Arabs and Chinese, Hus- 1 sians and Poles but no’ Americans,! America has removed her dead for in- \ torment in their own country, to the ‘ bewilderment of France, and indeed to the offence of French susceptibilities. | Mr Lraliam’s hook contains many vivid reconstructions of episodes in the j war ami many eloquent and impressive 1 passages. He continually reminds ns of our solemn obligation to make good us~ ' of the freedom bought for us by so much travail and blood. He is no militarist. but lie is not one of those wr ' believe that the war was a sordid trad war, or that it was fought in vain i What have we gained by. the war? \Y , quote his answer -“The Frenchman 1 came .back to a glorified and magnifi- lj Fiance; to a proved capacity to defea 4 and hold in cheek a deadly and histori cal enemy. The Englishman came baton free England, to a nation who wa queen of the nations, to a larger an more untrammelled world Finpire ; tli Belgian to a justified and safeguarde Belgium : the American to an Amcric which had achieved for the first tinin history a complete sense of nation hood and unity. The. Serbian retinue to a resurrected .Serbia and a prosper tiv< future of Southern Slav greatness But 'mv near we all were to being heat en and realising the very opposite o llie previn happy potentialities! Bn a I'tnl in the wheel or a hair in t!: scale and the Fiench would have lieslaves, the Englishman beaten on lam if nc.t on sea would have returnei cowering to It is little island, Kinpir falling from his grasp, and almost th wlr lo hill of the war to defray hv tb (dibits of his restive wnrking-elas population : the Belgian a German sub ,ject; the American flouted and atixiou with the shadow of a terrible new wa to light all by himself in I%* years t< conic : t.he Serbian a peon of Bulgari; or shackled ill the heavy, rusty Amfiaii irons. When we are ill despair i’ .Hjiii), Bril, Blii we should say. to our selves—‘Whereas wo might have beet slaves wo are free; whereas we niigh have been dead wo are alive.’ '

wlisit the graveyards of K ranee tell those who look at them. The fiend at" all pointing finitely to themselves. Their crosses an' the direction posts o! new life.”