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Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 18, 5 March 1915, Page 5 (Supplement)

turned towards the station. I did not see them before, but 1 saw them now. A few yards separating, tliem, I pass two shops licensed to sell the means for opening windows 1 towards this realm of happiness: and two houses with gaudy lights called the villagers to enter the region where all cares in! worries are forgotten. In tiie street pale-faced, illclad children played at being soldiers, marching with heads erect. The gorge was already dark with the evening shadows, but the lamps in the villa** were lit. When the village was passed I stood and looked back. In the west the setting sun had thrown over the heavens a glow. A well of liquid firt glowed over Torffonn, and its rays spread fan-like, so that they spanned the horizon, and, touching the rounded mass of Corstarfin, went forth over the firth. Against this background stood silhouetted the great arches that carry the railway across the hollow, and behind these the archea that bear the canal. The piers stood as a gigantic forest. These mighty arches might have been the work of the Romans. A soft luminous Tiaze fell on the village. Window after window was lit up. The door of a cottage near me opened, and a flood of light streamed out. A woman st*)d in the door, and looking up the road shouted "Jim," and a little boy, leaving his fellow-soldiers, rushed to her, and she clasped him in her arms and closed the door. ... In that moment the little village seemed to me as if it were an outpost of Paradise. Mature threw as a benediction the mantle of its loveliness over it. Nature meant it to be a sanctuary of beauty, but man had changed it into Sodom.

The ticket-collector stood at his post and scanned the passengers as they went through. He knew them all, ana had only a stray ticket to collect. 1 was l last and duly gave up my " return" from the "Cities of the Plain.'' But he did not let me through the gate. ' I want to show you something,'' said the ticket-collector, and he led me into hit office and produced a pamphlet. "I got it from the man who goes to Keswick," said the ticket-collector; "you know him." I know him, the best of men. "Nae doubt," went on the. ticket-collector; "nae doubt. He was always giving me tracts. Tracts—faugh ! -poor stuff, nae style, nae logic, and nae philosophee in them. But I aye took them and thanked him—for he is a nice man, though a perfect babe in matters of understanding. And I found them useful for spills. The other day he handed me this. . . ." and he waved n blue paper-covered booklet. "Mon,' he exclaimed, pushing his peaked cap back from his grey head, and sweeping his brass buttons down with his hand; "mon, this has fair hit me between the eyes." Then he opened the pamphlet and began to read passages that he had heavily scored with blue pencil. The czar has abolished the sale of vodka for ever' What is the result? "The old women in the villages " read the ticketcollector, "can hardly believe their own eyes, so changed are their menfolk. . . . Everywhere peace, kindness, and industry. War is said to be hell; but this is like a foretaste of heaven. "Listen to this," cried the collector, his arm outstretched. " "A newspaper correspondent writes, since the sale of vodka stopped the old night population (m the, doss houses) seems to have vanished.'' Every passage he read bore the same testimony. "And what are we doing?" he exclaimed. "We have stopped nothing; we surround our soldiers with the old temptations; I know all about it. Mom it was Buskin that said, 'There is no wealth but life, and we leave all our wealth at the mercy of every evil. It's a fair scandal. Do you ken 'the conclusion I've come to? it is that the best form of government is a benevolent despotism. Our men are afraid of this and that-losing votesbut an autocrat with a stroke of a pen can sweep away the power of hell, it they would only make King George an autocrat for a few years. . . that would be grand!"

He insisted on Tending me the bluecovered pamphlet, and it being his hour off he walked with me across the bridge. The vaflev was now dark. The snutt manufacturer's house down below was dropped in gloom. Lights twinkled on the slopes. Below a lamp-post at the far end of the bridge two men stood. When he saw them the ticket-collector stood fast. "Mon," said he, "l vc come tc a great resolution. I'm too old to hgnl ; and they canna gel at me in ony way. No Income-tax tor me; I want to feel that lam worth men dying for me: and I am going to he tee-total till the end of the war. I'll give the money to help the soldier's weans. It's the weans that pull at my heart-strings \nd he turned on his heel ami walked rapidly back across the &"#?• Under the lamp-post stood the 10a - man and the beadle, looking alter lu n. T spoke to them, for since the wai began we all "speak to each other in our piu'Sl«Ha fl be forgotten onyflun'?" asked the roadman, waving a hand towards the retreating form ot the tickct-collec-t0"'l don't think so," T answered, "he iust said that ho was going to be tect,.t.,l till the end of the war. -Tee-total!-' echoed the roadman mournfully; "There &*& finltller I<v,t S °Mv'twof I k.nds'w l nt sadly down l> ~;;, ~,,„.. „ m i 1 turned up the long St of step, that lends to he. road nlKivo. On the top of the first flu,] t 1 hll . n ,d and looked after them. \Uon p.-oj'lv resolved to join the company ot the 'Most souls." IV. t i ~ ,-ond 11.0 tJrkrt-oMlli -I'-:-ivim* i.. iVal T n-ver renh-d i«" "";""- ;' , i„.f nro \ Oaud Dub- i" muvd.--,W\ n a rVv,: „;,U4 T ".vrV-..-l 1,,.r„.. P ■.-. l ,ri,.,-... namo I c-nnnl own F „. v '|r\i'< to write down rnrrrrtiv '.,,..1 i.,..,. ■• thousand Piib" "wav. ,1,'.. result : 'V.t T am bvou'dd !•:-<•> f af . P for H • fir;! tine with IV- „n.l.l»ni that lav t-vi dav under ; ,,v l ■■> - 11, . ~-„i,'..,.. ef fl„. r-ili-: of '1" "le>n. l, ,,':;dofli--l.tscemsioh,v r rallenon ~,:;„„ ~!.;.' wore rforetn„n h ? zv. F .. ( ,„i, .frnd ™t lundlv and , v TT,-c i-no. T was m a far T < «'•- i„ln «-'--i war broke out. AH of a

sudden there sounded the drum, "Saying Come, Freemen, come, Ere your heritage be wasted! said the quick alarming drum.'' And the manhood of the island sprang to their feet. Mothers gave their sons, sending them away with sobs and tears, but in the name of God. On a drizzling morning the litEte steamer lay at the pier crowded with men and horses, g», ing out to fight and die. The hawsers were loosed. The steamer churned and backed and crept away. A girl stooo. near me crying softly". A youth with clean-cut features, and the yearning no tongue can utter shining in his eyes, leant over the taffrail and called to her, "Not crying, Jessie?" And she wiped her cheek with the moist handkerchief, and turned a smiling face to him and said, "No, I am not crying." And the paddles churned faster, and they passed into the drizzle and the haze. Weeks later I read how one man of that regiment —the regiment of my own country —killed another. . . and a few days later I read that he had done so in a drunken brawl. He was not from the island, that man, and I knew not who he is. His mother doubtless sent him forth J to fight as a hero for his King, and he '< became n murderer under the fostering ' of the State. Out of the clean country- ! side they were taken, these men, and the State that summoned them, and i whose call they answered, surrounded j them with Away from the influence of mother and sister and . sweetheart, wearied and worn with the ] hard toil of preparation, the State op- ' ened the canteen and said, "Take your : ease thus," and they did so. The Secretary of War made appeals to them. I "Be sober," said he, "avoid alcohol, , that the State through your self-denial

may live." But the State said —"See, 1 nave made ample provision for you, so that you may disregard the noble advice that my servant gives you." They camt in their thousands from the far NorlhWest at the call of their mother —clean and sober —and their mother opened tneanteen for their benefit on the plains. Such a world as that dwelt in the im-

agination ot Dean Swift —J never imagined that it could exist here and now.

And in that world of the cities of the plains what reward are we preparing for the men who are baring their breasts to the arrows, standing between us and death? When they come back, warworn, to what will they return? To honies in which the tires are extinguished, liie candles burnt down to the socket; the cupboards bare, the children famished and neglected? Is that to lie the guerdon of their sacrifice; is it lor that that they have gone down into hell? Surely it cannot be for that! A wave has passed over us, raising us to the realisation <)'' the higher value of things. Words live for us now which were dead yesterday. A beam of light has fallen into the chamber of imagery, and the word 'Temperance' has risen from the couch on which it lay dying, and it claims us for its own. Through it we can make the world know J hat we are worth fighting for—worth that th« young, the strong, and the leave shou'd take everything they bold dear their ideals, their love, their little children unborn—and throw them into the trench, and there give themselves a»d their dreams lo death for us. We mio! see to it thai we are wcrthy the sacrifice. V. Ti seemed to me hitherto thai T ipa (iii'-'ii of Hie country endowed with Iho e,-..:-,|.>.e rreednni on earth. Fiul the tiek-t-collecior !.-; proved to me ih-d th:,i was a d'vwu. Here n eur par-h I ], :iV e no power to control this >l : : a< I?,at matters so vitally in !'"■ edie; oi ,!,,. plain. W« have a IVi-b f'oue il ..„,i ~ ('....utv Council, and I don - ) km>w 1,-,w manv other diemifed a"d hone.-;--. abb. authoiilies, whom we elect. Hut v.. ehet nobolv t.) cordrol Ihk A body of unelected Justices, of whom w 1.n0.v n.y.hin", sol t ! " for us I'-d down vomh-r i„ (1,,. cities of (he plain i'-re shall b'- ) w \f ;, ,1„7"11 pbu -■ l"V ,-,,. uianer ; ;cti:rine of paupers and erimj ?1 . Is. fThe law. .hanee with sueh ka'-ridnseni-.ie nviftim s ia those davs thai 1 .;■•.■• he wrom'V And here am 1. new Iv awakened by the ticket-collector to thai enormitv. and f am not ft'"" to do anvlhine-. Tl is surelv a mad world. We needed to b" awakened : and we have been awakened with the shriek of shells and the trying of the perishing!

[ And the result of the awakening will be regeneration for the Cities of the Plain. The ticket-collector has deprived me ! for the time being of my peace of mind. , ' My conversion is so recent that 1 am 6 , afraid of falling into the fanaticism of the newly converted. I followed the I General is a man of experience, and he * carriage, and as we were passing Sod- ' ' om, lying there under our feet, I spoke > jto him about it. He looked at me with » ; cold eyes. "Do you want to sacrifice e j the freedom of the individual:'" he askled in his curt military tones; "do you *, I think that you can make saints of ■people by Act of Parliament? They * ! would be mere plaster-saints." I was 1 j reduced to silence. My new-born zeal 5 I seomt-d to ooze- out at every pore. There ' I was a touch of amused scorn in the Genj ! oral s eye as he glanced' at me. The ; Geenral is a man of experience, and he j jis quite right. Acts of Parliament will ' | never make saints of the people. Rut j i tiie State can see to it that the people , i are not surrounded by temptations i j through the operations of Acts of Par"'liament; that, if the State is impotent i to make saints, it shall not, on the oth- ' ; er hand, set itself deliberately to mane 1 | devils. That, it seems to me, is what [ j the State is now doing in the cities of ' j the plain. In ten thousand schools the ' \ State sanctions that its children be ' I taught to pray—" Lead us not into : i temptation," mid that same State encir- [ j cles the path of its children by legalised I | temptations at every corner. It is the j • maddest of worlds. I may be wrong | ''and the General wholly right. But as j ■ the ticket-collector said the last time t , j saw him—" I would like to see the man ' j who could convince me that I am " i wrong." And I don't know whether to Ibe grateful to the ticket-collector or not. Ho has deprived me of some of ' ! with thinking of problems which I am j' my sleep; he has made my head ticut i

not lit to cope with; and, most unlooked for ui nil, he has made a tee-totaler of me til! the end of the war. There is a plaintive note in the ticket-collector's voice, which strikes a chord in my heart, when lie invariably adds: ''l hope the war won't last long." For, tt it dries, there will be the danger of the ticket-collector and myself becoming tee-totaler.s for altogether. And it is such an ugly word—tee-totaler! If only the ticket-collector would coin a new ;iik! beautiful word to connote his new and k'liclicent stale of mind! It is a |:ily that great causes should be burdened by the weight of Ugly words. (Note—The parish of these sketches is nowhere; yet in these days n is everywhere throughout Britain.)