THE REALITY OF OUR TASK.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 288, 29 June 1917, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE REALITY OF OUR TASK.

By ONE WHO KNOWS. To win outright against Germany, to impose anything like our terms on her, and so secure a laisting peace — have the great majority or even the bare majority of our people, rich and poor, thinking and thoughtless, pessimist and "optimist," realised what tltrtt truly means? Ido not believe they have. Nearly everything one sees in London goes to show they have not, and nearly everything one sees in the country likewise. They do not realise that the task is even half as mighty as it will prove to be. Tins belief is not new to me. It has been at the hack of my mind more or less during the last two and » half years*, because I can recall the war of 1870, and because the military preparation and the whole organisation of Prussia have been impressed on m«? from very early youth. Often this fact that people do not realise the mightiness of the task oppresses me on reading debates on cotton and other such trifles —they are toys of children compared with the gigantic life-and-death grapple just across the water —and on observing the ordinary, easy-going life and talk of so many pooplo at home. Germany intends to, and will, weal us down to the bone before she suffers us to break her; and there are great masses of rich, of fairly prosperous, and of poor people here who as yet have not experienced an abrasion of the skin. There is no pleasure in saying this), there is ireluctawe toe] distaste in saying it; but it is bed-rock truth. OUR OVERWHELMING PART. I am no pessimist, and hate dismal croaking. I have twice within the last six month; visited the fighting fronts of both the great Armies in France, and have once visited the ba'ie of one of

these armies an dadmired the wonderful clock-work organisation there. I have been over the Somme with the

British, and at Verdun and three of its forts have seen the work of the French; in the Argonne, too, and at Champagne, almost on the identical ground near Ripont where French and German are to-day at terrible grips l . Nobody can be with these armies, full as they are of inexhaustible spirits and good-humoured heroism., and come home anything but optimistic; by optimistic I mean one must come home saying to oneself something like this : "The task set the British and French Armies is the most tremendous that can be conceived. They have the mightiest, most resolute and relentless foe. well armed, well manned, well machined in every respect down to a detail. Yet . . . they can do it, but only do it by the people of both countries mak ing sacrifices at least comparable to the sacrifices in the trenches and on no man's ground. Otherwise, of course, it cannot possibly be done.'' I think this much nearer the spirit of true optimism than pretending that Germany is starving and will soon be boaten. Optimism faces fact and through courajre rises supreme over misfortune and difficulty.

Moreover, having lately seen the French Army at work I am simply forced to this conclusion: it rests with Great Britain henceforth to take the overwhelming part. The French Army is superb. Its latest retort to the German at Maisons do Champagne is amazing, though perhaps after spending a day or two there with the young French officers, those bright spirits who have never a moment's doubt of "doing in" the Boche all right, as they will tell you if you ask, for they seem to speak English better than many of us; ono of them spoke it so easily tint I was deceived, and asked how he came to bo a French officer, and he answered, "Just in the ordinary way, you know." I had thought him English." The French are r.rdent, irrepressible; but they are not super-human. Recall their 'work and losses in the first year and a half of war. Observe the length of their line. Study their figures. And then you will see at onco that Great Britain must do it Do not gamble on the endless manpower of Russia, on China, America, or on starving Germany and Austria (neither is starving, and' Austria was tar better organised than simpo ed here); or on the fall of the mark "(other marks than Germany's are falling badly) ; and do not gamble on revolution in Germany—there is not the ghost of a chance of it, unless the War Staff gives in to the Allies before the German Army is broken and cedes German boil.

POOL OF MANY THINGS. To gamble on any of the above chances only means the los* of reasoning power. * Great Britain ha?. l —with France superbly at bay— to break the German line and the German heart that i-; behind that tremendous line. And the only way it can by any human possibility be done is by stern and wholesale sacrifices at home in order to furnish our great Armv and its matchless leader AVITH THE STUFF, with the lighting men and munitions) and food and labour.

It may even be that we shall have to pool resource* at home in order to do it—to pool and to suffer the State to dole out to us in fitting or even equal portions. I am not sure we shall not have to pool many things—the necessaries and comforts of life, and also the In hour.

Has this grim truth taken hold of people here so far? I think not. Funnv little wrangles about cotton, about Home Rule, about natv organisations, and so ion, seem to show—(piite as clearly as Giro's dances show—that many people have never even dreamt it as a nightmare. Hut then they do not know the strength of the enemy. They have not seen his extraordinary defensive fortresses at the front or'grasped the truth that he has milihuH i I men on the western front to-day. They do not imagine the long-drawn-out resistance he will make when the British Army has shifted him across the border into lielgiiim, and slowly and with untold courage got him- the Vvi neh at il with us. all tin way out of the coafl and iron districts of frame. There is nulling like a full under- -! 'tiding of the oide.il v,e mil't go thro.rgh before Als.-ee and Lorraine, Poland, lielgiiim. Kraiw, Rumania, and Serbia are taken inv.iv .from Germany: before .she is broken apart from Au-fia, and brought -enerallv. a blinded, mad giant, to he,- km,.". The longer we fail to under (and k (he greater Hi" ordeal will prove. Al our present nte e| imd'-rstandini; it «ill ta.ke years- ';• '-"<■ and keep the hateful power „f "A man iu-.| foe •■ land :.. n ) i' c " on a \e\v Zeal' fa. n. Yin miKbf as well take I ..aes' out :> r an hotel." A witne- s "him: c\i- ''""' '■ before the ' : iii' irv Poi'vic l Hoard recently.