THE SACRIFICE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1512, 19 February 1916, Page 4

THE SACRIFICE.

A MOTHER ON COMPULSION. “I DIDN’T RAISE MY BOY—” The recruiting scheme issued for New Zealand stresses the necessity for greater individual sacrifice. The following stirring article from the Daily Mail, by one of Britain’s mothers, Indicates what, in her opinion, must follow the early sacrifice of her sisters and children, namely: “The belated statesmanship of compulsion.” I am a British mother whose son is fighting for his country (writes “One of Them” in the Daily Mail).

My boy is an only son. War took him from me just when he was able to support me, when he had begun to reap in civil occupation the harvest of the care and education of his boyhood. War took him away from me soon after I lost the husband who lives for me only now in the likeness of his son, when a mother held her son tighter to her because he was all that was left her. And I gave him gladly. Some time ago an American friend in Colorado sent me a copy of the most popular song to-day in the United States. Its title is, “I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier.” I did not “raise” my boy to be a soldier. But thank God that T

reared him to be a patriot, to love no less than me that dual Mother of every man to whom be owes more obligation than to the woman who bore him, his Mother country. I thank God that, in the distress of that greater Mother, my only son left his British mother’s side to answer the call. I was helped, when the parting came, by the thought that whatever my own distress might be, the distress of his other Mother was greater and her claim on him more urgent than mine.

I did not raise my boy to be a soldier. When the call of his country cried out I lay sleepless at nights, trembling against the day when I knew that he would answer it. But on the night when my boy came home and told me his decision, I first learned that even a mother’s love needs the crown of a mother’s pride. So I gave my son gladly. That was fifteen months ago. For some months my son has been in the trenches in Flanders, and I have not seen his dear face, but I hugged and hugged the hope that he would be among the men who could be spared home on short leave this Christmas. Both of us have hugged that hope. All our* letters to each other for many weeks were threaded with talk of those forty eight hours together again. “I think there’s a good chance mother,” he wrote at the end of November, ‘‘they’re giving as much Christmas leave as they can. Anyway, make that cake that nobody else can make but you.” I made it first for him when his head scarce topped the table, and he has insisted on it every Christmas since. A week later I wrote him: ‘‘Something tells me that you are coming and the cake will be made.” But I schooled myself to believe nothing until I heard once more a man’s heavy steps in my empty home and saw once more a man s rough coat hanging on the vacant peg. It was well I did so. For my boy was one of the thousands of other mothers’ boys who could not be spared. His Christmas letter lies open before me as I write this. ‘‘We fellows who could not get Christmas leave have swallowed the disappointment. There isn’t a battalion whose colonel is not a father who wouldn’t send any one of his men home for Christmas rather than take his own leave. There isn’t a man who hasn't got leave who doesn’t know that it is only because he cannot be spared. But the thing that does make all of us men at the front bitter is the reflection that men who have been out here month after month without leave-some of them ever since the first landing—have had to keep our end up for the slackers at home. If all the young and able-bodied fellows had rolled in at first the war would have been over now.”

That letter from my son is sufficient explanation of why I am one of the British mothers who are glad to-day to learn that at last we are to have compulsion. I did not “raise” my son to be a soldier. And my son was not made to be a soldier. Mothers know their sons, their constitutions, and their temperaments, better than anyone else; better than their son himself. Of my sou I know that bis spirit is stronger than his body, his soul has got more stamina than bis muscles, the endurances and nerve strain ot the trenches are purgatory to his temperament that he has never so much as hinted at in his letters —but his mother knows. And while he was glad to undergo this for his country, and while his mother was glad to let him go, she sees around her all day hundreds of lustier and more hardy young men who have shrunk from their duty and whose mothers and womenfolk have been deaf to the greater claim. Towards men like that we mothers who have given gladly feel a scorn that has no words, to women like that we would’ deny the title of British. And thus we welcome compulsion. The trials and dangers that our brave boys have shared so cheerfully will lose half their pangs to us mothers ot Britain who watch and pray when each of us knows that her son is but sharing the common duty of all his fellowmen. We mothers and women of Britain who have been silent during the war. Over a hundred thousand sons and husbands have been taken away from us for ever, and we have raised no murmur against the toll wrung out of our heart’s blood as our country s ransom from the talons of barbarism. But the brave men die, and rest, unregretting, in their glorious sleep, while the women live on In the grief that is undying. War, as ever of old, takes ultimately its greatest toll from women. I speak, lam sure, for all the voiceless mothers ana wives of Britain when I call upon men who lead our country to follow up their belated statesmanship of military compulsion by a New Year’s resolution of greater trusteeship of those millions of dear lives we women have given to them.

THERE IS ONLY ONE SANDER EXTRACT, and that is why the people insist on getting it, and why they reject the many inferior substitutes and the cheap and frequently harmful ‘‘just as goods.” The GENUINE SANDER EXTRACT is free from the objectionable qualities of the common eucalyptus oils and the socalled “extracts.” SANDER’S EXTRACT is the most powerful antiseptic and healing remedy that can be used with safety; it prevents and cures all infectious disease — influenza, colds, fevers, smallpox, diphtheria, flatulence, dyspepsia, diarrhoea, dysentery and kidney troubles. SANDER’S EXTRACT, applied to ulcers, burns, sprains, cuts, inflamed and itching skin, gives instant relief and cures permanently. Three drops in a teaspoonful of cod liver oil is a specific in all chronic lung affections. Rheumatism, neuralgia and toothache are quickly dispelled by it. Reliability, effectiveness and purity are the great attributes of SANDER’S EXTRACT.