AT MONS.

Taihape Daily Times, 11 December 1918, Page 5

AT MONS.

‘ 'Givis’ ’ writes in the Otago Daily Times:—The armistice hour. when it struck, found the British at Mons. At Mons! —think of the miracle of it. The wheel had come full circle; we end where we began. A whole llaid. of vicissitudes of heroic endeavour, of sorrow and of joy, lies between the Mons of our beginning and the Mons of our triumphant close. The "Old Contemptibles, ’ ’ where are they? No longer in the fighting front, alas; but shrined for ever in the nation’s reverence and love. This is the place to s say, and within the last few days Mr Lloyd George has said it, that Britain has done her bit, and a bit more than her bit. It was our Eastern offensives —at Gallipoli, in Mesopotamia, and Palestine —-that brought Turkey down, Austria ,the next prop to fall, even an American critic ean see, succumbed to the British blockade. In the West, we began with the beginning and end only with the end. To America we owo the last and most welcome ounce turned a wavering scale. But the great: body of weight was in the scale al* ready. To whom does the world owo the maintenance of the struggle from Mons to the Marne, fromfthe Marne t to Tprcs, from Yprcs to Verdun, from Verdun to the Somme, from the Somme " to the desperate German offensive in the spring of this year, and then until the Americans, young, gay and bright, arrived to turn the scale.? To whom but the gallant French and stubborn British! ..The war closed —we have done our bit, and a bit more than our bit.