Manawatu Herald. SATURDAY, APRIL 14, 1917. NEW ZEALAND MINERS—A CONTRAST.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1698, 14 April 1917, Page 2

Manawatu Herald. SATURDAY, APRIL 14, 1917. NEW ZEALAND MINERS—A CONTRAST.

THE Wellington Post draws a comparison he!ween (lie New Zealand miners at (he front and (hose adopting (he go-slow policy in New Zealand. Our contemporary first; quotes the brief cable: “The New Zealanders were first, (he Scots a hundred yards behind." Thu.-. tersely and eloquently the cablegram records the result of the tunnelling competition preceding the Battle of Arras, in which the miners strove with each other to contribute the greatest amount of gallery work for the overthrow of the entrenched Hun. In every sense it was an Homeric struggle, carrying in its (rain

the highest modern forms of death and destruction; and yet it was relieved on our side by the old British sporting instinct, which carries men with a jest to toil on to victory or to the grave. In this strenuous subterranean competition beneath the stricken soil of France one sees again, visualised in a far different environment, the struggle on the fair fields of Britain between the New Zealand All Blacks and the players of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Once again, in Avar as in sport, the men from oversea have compared favourably with their forbears, and the playing fields of the nation have proved to be in this respect (if not in certain others) the training-ground of victory. But there is one still more striking aspect. These victors in subterranean France are New Zealand miners, and yet while they strain their tierce energy in the Empire cause, comrades and felloAvunionists in New Zealand deliver the easy stroke, and by restriction of coal output handicap the national Avar-elfort. The inconsistency, madness, and tragedy of it are pathetic. Is there not yet time for Ncav Zealand Avorkers to turn their attention from the Avords of the soap-boy to the deeds done in the galleries at Arras ? At this stage of the Avar no other sort of gallefy•\vork counts; and Labour’s reAvard will surely be proportioned to its loyalty to the national idea. We are glad that this inspiring ocavs from Arras comes at a moment Avhen the industrial tide on the “West Coast appears to be on the turn.