CURRENT TOPICS.
WHAT IS OUR DUTY? What is our duty? This question was asked by Dr. Gibb in a sermon at Wellington on Sunday. He proceeded to answer the question. This (h'st:
To realise that till now the war has been a war between the Herman nation ami the Army and Navy of I'.rilnin, and to realise further that we cannot conquer till the nation, the whole nation, every man and woman, is yoked to the task of overcoming this grim enemy. Into this struggle must be put all that we are and all that we have. And onfi of the first results of the mastery of our minds by this conviction will be this: Every man physically til. and of suitable age, will enroll liiinself in t'lO army of the Dominion. V,"o cannot all
go. Voting men and strong neat must r.tay behind for (ho sake of (lie ni"il who go, us well as for oilier reasons fill let. ibis poinl be stressed. The (litest inn whether any man is to go or • fay should b, loft to the authorities. Hiir duty is to \olunleer. If the lot falls on us (o slay at homo, let us in ;,ur hum- sphere gird ourselves in all po-siblo ways to help on the great issue: if lot falls on us to go and light, then in the name of God let us go and play
the man. Whose heart did not thrill yesterday at the sight of ;;hose gallant men' marching through the streets of out City? One thought of the cry of the old gladiators: ''\\ r o who are about to die salute you." God grant that many of them many return. Doubtless many of them will not. They will die and bo buried in a strange land. But they reck not of that, these splendid men, the flower of our youth, whose faces seemed to betoken self-control, a clean life, a high purpose. The men who are now going to the front or volunteering to go, know what is before them. They have counted the cost. They have given up all for the sake of their country and the cause of freedom. God bless and reward them! They are going for in. They are going for you. Did you who looked on them yesterday—you who might go, but have never faced the question—feel no prick of shame? You cannot all go, but every young man ought at the least to offer his services to his country. It is a source of unmingled gratification to me that nearly a hundred of St. John's young men are already enrolled in the army of the nation. Tt will be larger presently. Shama on the laggar4s, shame on the cowards, who hang back in this day of Armageddon ! NEW ZEALAND'S PART. A writer in a southern newspaper suggests that New Zealand, besides supplying its quota in men, should also organise food supplies for the Allies. He says: ''lt is not an easy matter to supply frozen meat to armies in the field —would it not be well to start tinning meat on a large scale. Similarly ought we not to manufacture supplies of bovril? Is our butter and cheese packed in the most suitable form for conveyance to the front? Should tlu former be heavily salted to ensure its keeping? Mutton tallow may be a very useful food supply in a Russian winter. How should it be prepared and how packed? Among the smaller industries, can we, usefully supply such goods an pearl barley, rolled oats, split peas and the like? Can our woollen mills overtake the local demand for khaki and supply anything for the Allied armies? Cau we supply tanned sheepskins with the wool on to make winter overcoats for tho men in the trenches? These are only some of the questions which will occur to any people, and are given as illustrations of my main proposition, which is that New Zealand's most valuable contribution to the Empire in tlie near future will probably be a carefully organised food supply, and that those of the people who are engaged in its production or manufacture are doing their bit for the Empire as truly as are thoso ammunition-makers of Manchester."
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TDN19150618.2.20
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 318, 18 June 1915, Page 4
Word count
Tapeke kupu
708CURRENT TOPICS. Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 318, 18 June 1915, Page 4
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Taranaki Daily News. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.