WONDERFUL REVELATIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 August 1915, Page 10

WONDERFUL REVELATIONS.

There are m«ny wonderful revelations to us in this most wonderful ©f years (writes "Tbhunga" in the Auoktond Herald). Firstly and foremostly, Death has verily lost its sting among those who dedicate themselves for a great cause and realise that there is more than mere living if men would, be as they should be. The letters that arc rarely printed, that are treasured in loving hands as the last thoughts of gallant hearts entering of free will the Valley of the Shadow, are strangely colored by a simple readiness to die. Those who wait at home ever hope that Fate will be kind to their dear ones—ignoring in their lovingness what may be the greatest gift of the high gods to their darlings. Those who go to fight seem ever in their hearts to expect a soldiers ending, and to expect it with a simple sense of duty-doing which they do not know to be heroic. That is how and why, in Oallipoli and Flanders, in the shifting lines of France, and in the unfa i homed marches of the seas, deeds that are without parallel in history are wi ought by lads unversed in war and by men who have come from city streets and country furrows, from merchant ships and mining-shafts, from luxury and penury and from all the British world. Heroic has been the "regular" and the navy man, but not one whit less heroic the eager volunteer. It were better to die than to lose freedom and security, better a thousand times to die grappling with Evil than to wait for the agony of Belgium to befall their own dear lands. ! Xot in words has this been felt, nor by ! speech expressed, but it has burned like j I a smouldering fire in every heart that i has heard and answered the call to arms. Wonderful to think of, strange wonder of wonders, is the lighting of this fire by tlii! very hand of Death and Suffering. "What will they say of the 'six-bob-a-day tourists' now?" wrote an Australian, sorely wounded in the great landing. Within a month there were over a tarn- | dred .thousand enlistments in the Com- j monwcalth. Alan held back while there | seemed but little danger, while it was i vaguely thought that "six-bob-a-day | tourist" defined the soldier in Egypt; | they swanmed to fill the torn and shattered ranks that won foothold in Galli- i poli, to dare the same danger, to arieet I the same suffering and the same death. ! And so in New Zealand, and In Canada, [ in Britain, and wherever the bugles call, ', heroic dying stirs and inspires heroic ? emulation; until the old-fashioned mili- | tary man accustomed to think of regi- I ments as demoralised by excessive loss, { of raw recruits as flinching under deadly ( punishment, of home towns shocked and I palsied by ghastly casualty lists, is be- • wildered and perplexed by the strange 1 fact that tile moat desperate the fighting I the faster the volunteering. f