IS IT WORTH IT?

Taranaki Daily News, 21 July 1917, Page 3

IS IT WORTH IT?

Al? OFFICER'S LETTER. Some passaces in a letter written by •m officer in France, conveying his 'imprc'=sioiis of the western front, in which lie asks and answers the question ''ls it worth it?" affords (lie ibest possible reply to anyone inclined to flirt with tlia vdea of an inconclusive peace. ''Round a corner,'' lie write 3, "we strike the Tommy out for business, . some seated on the pavement, others leaning against the will. This crowd are filling up their water bottles :u a pump in the street. They're moving into the trenches soon. Their tin hats are at all angles. Some of the man lay on the cold pavonent, others ate, or smoked. A funny lot, a happy lot? Yes; a careless crowd one would say, but there is, something quietly steadfast in those faces, a sort of 'I don't want to talk' expression—may be, 'I know my thoughts of all this around me. You keep yours to yourself.' "And down the long street there is silence, and the grass grows. What will be the end of it all? Will the streets of this town, and the hundreds like it, twer ring again to the happy footsteps of its own people? Will the women come back and stretch out loving hands to the poor tattered lace curtains? Will the people say 'Here stood my house, and here I will build another ' Is it worth while carrying on such a struggle, when it only more wrecked homes and scattered people? Here this desolation; at home, politics; this man and that man going or coming. Roumania routed. More ships sunk. Snow and cold. Wet and mud. "Yes, and like a flash it comes to you the real thing. There, but, for the valor and sacrifice of others, is my wrecked home! Only 'by chance, those are not the 'curtains' I watched my wife labor over; but they might have been, and they would have been, my home and things; and it would have been my wife and my mother fleeing for their lives. Is it worth it? Yes, if live is worth anything. If life means anything, be-' yond eating and drinking and working. Is it worth it? It's more than worth it, when things look black, than it was when victory smiled and the sun shone. It must be worth it all. *To man worth his salt can, day after day, see the cart go by his window with the Union Jack covering a box. No man who has ever seen wrecked homes, hunted women and children, or stood by the simple wooden crosses of a military cemetery, can ever doubt it, nor bids Iris fear that weakkneed people at home will rush in as soon as the brutes who have done all this crv peace. Peace! What peace can ever undo this horror? Who can set the score of misery, or count the pain of all this? Help us all you can, and leave us alone to finish it, I believe, is the one thought of the lot of us here. We want our own back, that's what we want—Revenge! We've got a lot to pay back. Every stone should be paid for. Let us be just to the living and the dead. There are millions that will come after us, as there have been millions before us. They are gone; but they gave us life and libertv, freedom and civilisation, and the ri"ht 'to a happy life. Are we going to hand over something better, or somethin" worse, to those who follow? Let each"one answer for himself; but mymind's made up. I say, it's worth it all; and we can make it so if we are true to those who have already tried. So lets be cheerful and go on trying. It is acMth it."