SPIRIT OF ANZAC

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 514, 24 April 1933, Page 4

SPIRIT OF ANZAC

Eighteen years ago to-morrow the men of the Australian and New Zealand army corps wrote an imperishable name in history on the shell-torn tragic shores of the Gallipoli Peninsula. They went, in the historic phrase of that unfortunate man, Woodrow Wilson, "to make the world safe for democracy." They would probably not have phrased it like that but so far as the ideal ever can enter into war, that was the ideal that sent them to face the grim searred slopes of a shore that held death in every crevice and ravine. They were, as John Masefield says in his epic- of the landing, the flower of the world's youth, and they wrought deeds which are fit to stand beside any of those which have built a great empire's history. To-morrow is the anniversary of the landing and 18 years later New Zealand and Australia, and with them the whole Empire, will pay tribute to the valiant dead who never die. That, at least, is the purpose of Anzac Day, but as with many other anniversaries which have equal significance, time is perhaps clulling the national recognition. It has been said that it is an unwise thing to recall harrowing memories and to op'en again old .wounds of sorrow and remembrance. But human grief is not something that comes and goes at will with the opening or closing of a door and the wounds which Anzac left upon those who were left behind, will not be healed or opened by the setting aside of one day in the year in which to pay the passing tribute of a sigh. The phrase "the spirit of Anzac" has become engrafted into the language and it is that spirit which the day most justly eommemorates. It is not for any national vainglory or for any glorification of war, but tribute to those who "spilled out the red sweet wine of youth" in a feat of arms that gave this young nation the greatest page in its history. But as with the years that dull the recollection of that feat of arms, so perhaps the significance of "the spirit of Anzac" beconies obscured. Yet that spirit was no thing of the moment; it was the expression of a spirit which can carry a people to greatness. It Was a spirit which did not flare up anc die away but which has been left to strengthen the sinews of peace perhaps more than those of war. It is a spirit, which if kept alive, will see young New Zealand triumphantly storm the heights of depression and conquer obstacles in their way even more formidable than those which confronted the khaki ranks at Anzac Cove. It was a spirit of eourage in face of difficulties, of cheerfulness under the most trying conditions, of resourcefulness in1 emergency anc of the determination to hang on to the death. That was the spirit of Anzac and it is one which is needecl to-day fully as much as it was needed then, To-morrow should not serve as a painful reminder of hidden sorrows but rather as a call for -eourage in the future and a determination to make good the heritage which the men of Anzac died to defend.