The Times. PUBLISHED ON TUESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOONS. FRIDAY, AUGUST 3 1917 THREE YEARS OF WAR.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 298, 3 August 1917, Page 2

The Times. PUBLISHED ON TUESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOONS.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 3 1917 THREE YEARS OF WAR.

" We nothing extenuate, nor set down auoht in malice..''

To-morrow we celebrate the third anniversary of Great Britain's momentous decision to take up arms on behalf of liberty and civilization against the blood-lust and insane desire for world-dom-ination of the mad-dog of Kurope. Thirty-six months have dragged out their slow length since untrained, unarmed and unprepared as we were we threw the handful of men we had ready between what was left of trampled, outraged Belgium and the millions Germany had been for years training and holding in readiness, waiting only fur the opportunity to tread Western civilization in the mud and found upon its ruins a Prussianial empire extending from the Bay of Biscay to the Persian Gulf.

And through it all the heart of the Empire has never faltered—the pulse of the nation has never fluttered—and the world has seen with what fortitude and majesty the Indomitable Anglo-Saxon race can fight and suffer. The power and determination to dare and to endure, to attempt and to achieve, lo haste but not to hurry, lias always been ours, but never have we shewn it in a greater degree than throughout this war. Yet even the firmest beleiver in the genius and the greatness of the British race must have

wondered at the magnificent reserve of power and intrepidity that lay latent waiting for the supreme crisis of its history to call it forth-

These three momentous years have proved to ns that our race is imbued with one single heart and aim, no matter how many thousand miles ot ocean roll be tween us and the Motherland. The instant response of the Colonies at the call to arms of their clan was magnificent—but far more magnificent has been the calm and resolute courage with which they have held to their determination to see the work through to the end. We have seen with a pride that our grief for those we have lost cannot diminish our Colonial troops emulating and vieing with the Homeland's finest .soldiers in ill-fated Gallipoli, blood-drenched Flanders and the arid wastes of Africa. And what strides have we not made in three years. We have seen England's "contemptible little army" of 150,000 men (which, small as it was, yet flung back the German hosts on their march upon Paris, and destroyed forever their hope of ultimate victory) grow into a force of six millions and a half —seven millions if we count in the Navv. We have seen these men from the field, from the factory, from the shop, who had never dreamed that they would ever hear a shot fired in anger, formed into welltrained, thoroughly disciplined battalions in fewer months than it was formerly thought to require years. We have seen them equipped with uniforms, arms, artillery and munitions with an almost unbelievable lavishness. And yet we have found the time and the means to supply our Allies with munitions and money to an almost unlimited extent.

Through these three years of strenuous work, of heroism unequalled ancTdevotiou unparalled, the most wonderful and comforting thing of all ha«s been the fact that civilian life in every corner of our wide-flung Empire has lived secure in the knowledge that no acre of British land will ever be trodden by the foot of an invader while St. George's cross, blazoned on its snowy groundwork, still flies from the jackstaff of our warships. Nobly indeed has our " Silent Navy " lived up to the traditions first imbued into it by Alfred a thousand years ago, that our soil must be kept sacred from the tread of an enemy's foot. The feats of SUiys, of the desti action of the Armada, and of Trafalgar have been repeated for our immunity upon a vaster scale and with equal gallantry. No enemy ship can float upon the surface of the sea-lanes that link together the component parts of our Empire. The tiger-pirate still haunts their depths but hunted with a zeal that frustrates his purpose of ruin and starvation, and the terror that flies by night still occasionally rain high explosives and incendiary bombs upon sleeping women and children, but from military invasion we are, thanks to our fleet, as secure as if we had not a foe on the planet. And we can console ourselves by the reflection that our losses by submarines, grave though they are, are yet far below our losses in the Napoleonic wars, and the deaths from the air raids are but one eighth of the numbers killed by the traffic in the streets of London in times of peace. Those of our readers who have the opportunity to-night to hear the lecture upon the Navy and see lhe pictures oi the Jack Tars at their work will realise as they never did before how much we owe to the courage and endurance of the men who work beneath the White Ensign.

And lo the calm persistent bravery of the men of our mercantile marine we owe scarcely less. It is a marvellous tiling that during the war no ship of ours has ever had to stay in port because she lacked a crew to take her through the submarine infested water-ways. The sea seems to bring out all that is best in this race of ours, and the hearts beneath the Ked Ensign beat as true ami feaile-.sly a-, those beneath the white. And at the end, when the hellburn curse of llohen/.ollern despotism has been for ever destroyed we shall emerge stronger, wiser and better than we have ever been before. Our gold has been tried in the fire of adversity, and the courage, self-devotion and fortitude the struggle has brought forth will enrich and nurifv our blood for generation

after generation. Three hundred years ago Shakespeare wrote —

''Form the four corners of the world in arms And we shall shock them, naught shall make us rue If England to herself remain but tuie." . England, for which we may read the Empire, has remained true to herself, and in the end she will have naught to rue except the loss of so many of her best and bravest and dearest.