THE EMPIRE'S CALL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 284, 10 May 1915, Page 6

THE EMPIRE'S CALL.

TO ALL OK HER YOUNG HEX. (Germany is a -wicked menace to all that we mean by peace, liberty and progress. If (lermany should triumph our Xew Zealand independence would vanish, our liberties would cease, our country would become, like Belgium, an appanage to the most .brutal and ferocious of existing autocracies. Those Xew Zcalanders who fight ami die at the Dardanei es, li.yla.ng to the last for the Empire, fight and die fot their own homes and their own country and their own people as surely as if they fought and died within sight of Auckland town. The ideal that inspires them is the noblest of ideals. The debt we. owe them is inextinguishable, for it is part of the debt owed bv every free man to the heroic men who age after age and century after century and. generation after generation have won and kept and advanced liis freedom. The continental nations whom the example and pressure of militant and aggressive dermany have forced to adopt conscription have trained every man to arms and can call every man to the field. The British Empire is in no such advantageous position. It has depended upon voluntarism and de- . pends even in this crisis of its existence upon volunteers. New Zealand and Austra'ia. with their stiil embryoic and socialised universal service are practically in the same position as the United Kingdom—they must rely upon the individual sense of duty, of honor and of patriotism iu their sons. The Australians, we are told, have felt the call to what many foolishly thought might be a military parade—they are rolling up the recruits and mustering fast for a war where death stalks on battlefields and wounds wait for the soldier. We do not think that New Zcalandcrs will do less. Alanv who by every Honorable code should have volunteered are still playing football, disensing handicaps or criticising the War Office, but tliev have now the opportunity to show that it was not cowardice that delayed them and to place themselves for the rest of their lives—be their lives short or long—on Te* cord as loyal New Zealandcrs. If th»y think of tile fearless officers and men who at the Dardanelles have so acted that New Zealand is honored in tho world, and of those other Now Zealanders who, in Flanders and elsewhere, have fought and suffered or died for the Imperial cause, which is our cause, they will not hesitate to keep the*ranks .full and their own honor clean. True courage is rooted so deeply in the human heart that the very casualty lists which bring sorrow to many a loyal and loving home spur men to a noble emulation and are the best recruiting agents known in patriotic war—Auckland Herald.