HOME LIFE.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 April 1916, Page 2

HOME LIFE.

THE SOUL OP THE NATION.. AND ITS STRENGTH IN WAR. "Home" was the subject chosen by the Dev. W. G. Monckton last week for the first of three Lenten addresses delivered on the Auckland waterfront tinder the auspices of the Anglican Diocesan Evangelistic Council. He proposed, said Mr. Monckton, to speak upon a number of matters on which the safety and the future of the Empire chiefly depended. The Fifth Commandment, showed what the individual owed to those who had given him life and cared for him when he was lifeless and unable to care for himself. This debt , to one's parents must be carried on and faithfully repaid in after years. -In a new country such as New Zealand it was necessary that a sense of home and home responsibilities should be built up. 11l Auckland, he knew, tlus was harder :,han elsewhere in New Zealand, for the Miniate and other influences tended to encourage out-door life. Every man who loved his country must develop a love, of home and its obligations in his children, where discipline and comradeship were best to be learned.

The, speaker then drew a parallel in the relation between the Dominions and the llother Country, .which had watched over and protected the younger countries when they could, not protect them; selves. The British Navy, as one writer aptly put it, had protected New Zealand at si time when the colony could not have beaten off a fleet of Chinese junks ever if they had been commanded by a Swiss admiral on horseback. (Laughter). Her children had learned to ap; predate their debt to the Motherland, and had helped her a little with men and money, then more, as they were able', and now that she was in the greatest danger ever known in her history she was confidently calling upon them for aid. Such feeling of duty liad begun in the home, and if they ceased to do so the dpom of the Anglo-Saxon race was sealed. Children must be trained in the knowledge of God, for unless God kept the home all the guns of the British Navy could not protect it. There were people in New Zealand—he had met and argued with them—who put their own little money-grabbing ways before home and freedom, and all that was now at stake. Such folk had told him that they did not care how' the war went so long as they would make their profits. Some kept strippling boys at home to work, and others gave a couple of shillings out of £IO,OOO to help a wounded soldier. People like that would not be ashamed if the home life of their neighbours were made harder by their meanness. They should bo taxed to the utmost if necessary till they were brought down to the fare given to those braver men who were fighting their battles.