“CARRY ON!”

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1879, 19 September 1918, Page 1

“CARRY ON!”

MESSAGE FROM THE FRONT

NEW ZEALAND EDITORS VISIT

THE BATTLEFIELD

The following message, has been received by the Press Association from Mr F. Pirani, one. of the press delegates visiting Great Britain at the invitation of the Imperial authorities: —

London, September 13

The editorial mission returned to London to-day, after an extensive tour of France and Flanders. The New Zealand delegates, and, indeed, the whole party of overseas editors, have been greatly impressed by what they were privileged to see and to learn on and behind the historic Western front. We have seen the great war machine working at high pressure —a marvel of stupendous and complicated organisation, running with seeming miraculous smoothness and precision. We have seen our splendid men at work, talked with them about their experiences, listened with delight to their eagerly-told tales of some other follow’s dauntless valour — never by any chance do they enthuse over what they themselves have done —and discovered renewed inspiration in their cheerful optimism. Here and there in the semiconfidential privacy of mess-room or billet one heard whispers of sins of omission and commission, stories of somebody’s alleged blunders, but these are matters which, if they do not lack foundation in fact, must be left to be “washed up” after the war.

Meantime, they are but incidents, more or less inevitable happenings, in the world-redeeming enterprise to which we have set our hands. When we left New Zealand, the Hun was shaking his mailed fist at a threatened Paris, and making the world gasp, lest by his prodigious onslaught he should wrest the longcoveted Channel ports from the heroic defenders. The spring carnival of slaughter was in full swing, and the issue was still in doubt.

What has happened in the interim you in New Zealand know. Our gallant troops have sprung from the defensive to the offensive. They have swept back the Huns, and are still pushing forward. • Thousands upon thousands of prisoners caged behind the Allied lines testify to the success of their heroic operations. Paris the Beautiful is still the undisturbed capital of La Belle France. The Channel ports still fly the Allied flags. America has continued to make good. Britannia still rules the waves. And the end, though not yet, is nearer than —but, there! I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet. This, though, I can say, for it is writ large on all that we have seen: Unto us is to be Hie victory.

Everywhere, in the base camps, in the billets behind the lines, in the battered and bloodstained trenches, on the crowded roads, everywhere amidst this welter of blood and pain, aye, oven in the hospitals on the wan, drawn faces of the battletorn heroes it is written: Unto us is to be the victory. Why? Because (he salvation of humanity and the preservation of democracy demands it; because Right must prevail over Might; because, despite our national sins and shortcomings, we are in this tight on the side of God, and under His Almighty Captaincy defeat is unthinkable. No man could walk over the ground hallowed by the life-blood of so many of our dearest kinfolk without being touched by the overwhelming sadness of it all, War from near at hand looks so terribly different; it is frightful, it is ghastly, yet it is wonderfully and awfully grand ; it calls to the imagination the, soul-stirring harmony of the “Dead March,’’ as it might be played by a thousand mighty bands, followed by the “Glory Song,” as sung by all the sons of men in unison with the countless choirs of Heaven.

That is why wo editors hove come hook from the Western front with the song' of victory on our lips. We have been where things pettv and little pale into insignificance, where only the one big thing counts, where the brotherhood of man, welded in the furnace of pain and suffering, find* its fullest and truest expression, and where in the inscrutable wisdom of the Omnipotent there is being worked out a new and better order of things. Our message to you all is : “Garry on. All will be well.”