TO MY FRIEND IN THE TRENCHES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1426, 20 July 1915, Page 4

TO MY FRIEND IN THE TRENCHES.

Ido not know your exact address, but if this should meet your eyes “somewhere in the Dardanelles,” God bless you! I hang my head to think I am in New Zealand while you are fighting there, perhaps lying wounded, with the shells flying all around you, perhaps- lying for hours before they dare to come to carry you away in the dark. Or, perhaps you are well and strong, and every inch a man. I know you were when you went out, the fittest man amongst us, with the right, if ever man had, to the full enjoyment of this world. I send you the pride and Jove of every heart that beats within these islands. You will not scorn it; you will not scorn the love of those who watched from our peaceful land this great event in which your life is trembling in the scale. And I know, too, that when these days are over, when the great life the eye of faith can see has broken through the clouds, we who are now at home shall miss the glory that will be yours. There will be no man then with soul so dead that he will not look on you and know you for a hero, no boy who will not wish he had been with you. And in the years to come when this is a happy land once again, when the children press about us and ask about the war, what is there we would not give to say with you—l fought in the Dardanelles! Not once or twice in our fair island story the path of duty was the way to glory.