ARE WE DOWNHEARTED?

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 338, 13 November 1915, Page 7

ARE WE DOWNHEARTED?

WHAT OUR BOYS DID AT GALLIPOLI. GERMANS BLEEDING TO DEATH. In view of the gloomy outlook of the past few weeks, this cheery piece of optimism by Horatio Bottomfcy, the editor of John Bull, will be refreshing. He s+ates: — I want the public to stop looking at this war through yellow gobbles; I want, them to be clear-eyed and stouthearted. Look at the mighty deeds done by our own boys and our Australian sons in the Gallipoli Peninsula; taJk about the siege of Troy and all the heroic things old Homer wrote his long epics about —why, those lads in khaki have done more wonderf.il things than Homer could have invented if he had sat up all night working over-time. Think of the way our colonial troops stormed up the heights near the sea on their first landing, and remember they had never been under fire before. Into the sea they plunged from their boats; over the beach they rushed in the face of a tornado of lend, and then, like wild tigers, up tiic rough, steep, giant cliffs they wear, hanging on by their eyebrows in places but always hanging on, while the Turks, led by their German officer.?, made the air ring with a rain of bulJets —but they won! When in all the war did the Germans ever perform a feat to equal this one? Then tell inc. why all this bauble that has been running loose of late? If anybody ought to be down-hearted, it's the Germans; they are bleeding to death. Well, then, why worry? True, Germany is in possession of Belgium and of Northern France —but what is the good of that to them? Every day they remain there means an expenditure of several million pounds—and a strengthening of our position. And we are at length learning how to conduct the war. We are making the right kind of shells: we are sending two million fine fellows out to France; we are lending our weaker Allies all the money they want; we are grappling with the submarine peril —and our chemists arc busy, and we are getting through the Dardanelles. Do you really think that the Germans are happy? Do you imagine for a moment that they would have started the war if they had known we were coming in? Our spirtual lawyers, and our peace delegates, and the rest of them, at least did us a service by misleading the Kaiser in that respect —just as his own secret service agents were all at se~ in thinking that Irish, Indiaa, and industrial evolution would break out in the event of war. Poor chaps, they didn't understand the British race and the British Empire! I confess that it makes me ill to see so many of my countrymen with long faces. For heaven-s sake let us buck up. Are we downhearted? Nor, altogether? "Not likely," or if yon prefer it, "Not 'arf." Imagine the British Empire being wiped out by the base and brutal half-bred Teuton—for the German is only that at the best. He is the Unclean Thing of Europe—hoplessly depraved, beyond all redemption. And we will wipe him out. There shall! be no German Empire on the map of Europe; no Austro-Hungar-ian Empire—and no Turkey. France shall have back her lost provinces, and so shall Italy. Poland shall be a free kingdom^—and Belgium shall have whatever she likes. Heligoland will, of course, come back to Britain; and the Kiel Canal wiSl be denationalised. Of course, ther will be many other points to be settled; but these, are alreadv decided.

Talk about being desponent and low-spirited—we ought to be so fuM of elation that w 'd dread to go to St. Paul's for fear of pushing the dome off with our heads. We 've shown the world that hearts of cak still grow on English soil. So, when the next sadfaced son of sorrow comes wailing to you about what may happen next week or next month, slaj) him on the back and tell him of Neuve Chapelle, or of the struggle betwixt Mons and Compiegne; of fights in the air mid fights by sea. Tell how young Warneford lived and died; how Mike O'Leary Avon his V.C. Tel! of the splendid 'pluck of our men and the dauntless patience and fortitude of • our women. Tell of

>ur boundless wealth in money, and c, our endless wealth in men, of the ten or fifteen million more warriors we can raise if need be overseas; and if that own't make him proud and hopeful and confident, tell him to go to Hades and herd with the other sad lost souls.