The Daily News. SATURDAY, FRIDAY 15, 1913. A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 229, 15 February 1913, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, FRIDAY 15, 1913. A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD.

Now that the first shock of the terrible Antarctic disaster is over we have time to get a boiler perspective of an incident that will go down in the annals of the Empire as one of the finest examples of British pluck ami endurance that has ever been chronicled. In our modern fevcrishncss of existence, horn of the inevitable attempt to "get there first," whether it is in business or in an attack upon (lie Pule, or in social supremacy, we are apt lo overlook the value of thai national spirit which has made the Empire what it is. Crowing "old and gray and wan and past desire," life nowadays is nniie cynical and more careless and more selfish than it was wont to be a brief century ago. It has been said, and not without an clement of truth, that "we don't live for our country nowadays: we exist for ourselves." Rut the fate nf our Antarctic explorer.-, comes as a flat contradiction to this cynical philosophy. These men went forth, carrying their lives in their hands, not for personal aggrandisement, but because the blood of patriots flowed in their veins and the restless call to be up and doing appealed (o them as it ought to appeal to us all. There was no hidden gold lo he found at tile South Pole, no land to be gridii'oiied, 110 commercial enterprise to lie exploited, and at the very hot these explorers could look for nothing but the satisfaction of having done something to uphold the traditions of the land (hat bred them, and to have added one more laurel to the Crown of llie .Motherland. It was a magnificent concept ion. and a splendid achievement. Its morai value as a lesson to the world is beyond all count of words, 'these men braved unspeakable dangers, not in any spirit of commercialism. but because they were Englishmen and they cherished beyond all persona! cost the traditions of their race. Scott and hi-, brave comrades have not laid down their lives in vain. We can almost iind it in our hearts not to regret their deaths, from the value of the lesson they have left. Captain Scott's last message is not literature, but it is one of the most superb writings outside the pages of the Bible that the world has ever seen. Its plain Anglo-Saxon phraseology will make a historical classic of it; its utter selfabnegation gives the world the key to the man's character, and its quiet acceptance of the inevitable approach of "the fury with the abhorred shears" to "slit the thin-spun life'*' spells out the spirit of our national character in plain and simple language that ought to have touched the heart of every man, and has touched the heart of every woman. The message is a classic that will live with the last words of Nelson and of Wolfe and of a dozen other heroes that we love to honor and to love and to esteem as types of the British race. There is little in hi-tory to equal it, nothing to surpa-s it. for the message embodies the simply-expressed last thought- of a man who, in the face of certain death, found time to send a message of singular purity and extraordinary self-eiraceincnt lo a world that he could never see ajrain. "I have lived, T have loved. I have lost," was the last message of Andrea del Sarto, in an epitome of life that mu-t appeal to all of us. but Scott'.- is a more hopeful and a more inspiriting farewell." "T have lived, 1 have loved, but I have not lost," is a far mure glorion- ;iml more consoling message. We elders can appreciate it at something of its value, but we should dearly like those who have charge of our children to take example from our cousins overseas and bare the message read with something of the ceremony that impresses these occasions upon the childMi mind, in every school in the country. As with Chastelard. "the end of it was quietness at last," but it was an end that none of us can ever forget, and tii.it our children'.-, children should be taught to pass down 1o their children's children as as example of how a mail who loved his country can live and die for it in a spirit of -imple devotion and whole-hearted patriotism. The time is peculiarly ripe for a demonstration of this sort, and if this simple but dramatic story will stay the thoughtless among our youth wlio arc placing self before duty and country Scott will not have died in vain.