TO THE MOTHERS OF SOLDIER SONS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1868, 24 August 1918, Page 2

TO THE MOTHERS OF SOLDIER SONS.

THE British Ambassador at Rome, Sir Rennell Rodd, transmits the following message from the Italian Association of Mothers of Soldiers in the Field:—‘On the third anniversary of the day on which onr sons

took up arms against the common implacable enemy, who is not yet tired of so much devastation, such massacre and cruelty, from th.o silence of our houses deprived of. youth and joy, may the echo of pur cry of sorrow and horror for such destruction reach you; may the echo of our exultation for the magnificent courage of your sons reach you, admirable example which causes all past greatness to fade. Today we Italian mothers, although far, yet so near to you, and united in the same grief, in the same maternal sentiment, dumb in the same anxious waiting, look to you beyond the space dividing us and extend our hands to you, not trembling, but firm and united in a supreme covenant of resistance and of sacrifice, in a tacit oath of eternal hatred to the enemy; confident that the martyrdom of maternal hearts will not be in vain, not vain the bloodshed of the flower of our youth, not vain (he vision of liberty and of justice which illumined the dying eyes of our fallen sons, which incites such sublime sacrifice in (he fearless breasls of those who are lighting. A\ith the hope that the memory of such destruction, of such inhuman barbarism, shall not be cancelled by time, but that it shall be passed on from generation to generation, fruitful in implacable hatred for the race which tramples under foot and derides every right of all human pity; and that the eternal light which shines from the sacred tombs of our heroes and from the soil bathed in their bloom may illumine and show nations who have become brothers in danger and sorrow the way to be followed.”