LORD WOLSELEY ON A SOLDIER’S LIFE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1928, 10 August 1889, Page 3

LORD WOLSELEY ON A SOLDIER’S LIFE.

Yes, the soldier’s life is worth living. But to believe in this you must expel from its supreme .place among the recognised objects of existence that greed of gain which seems to have fastened, like a cancerous sore, upon most of the professions and ‘callings of men outside the Army, the Navy, and the Church. This mad and restless longing for wealth at any price, and for the luxury wealth can purchase, is eating away the manly heart of the English nation. It has become a religion, with its apostles 'and its writers, aye, even with its ; poets. A specious rhetoric tries to hind men to the effeminacy its teaching engenders but seeks to hide. It derides the lesson which the history of.the rise and fall of the great nations of antiquity conveys. Its one great command is, “Be rich.’’ ; As yet there are happily thousands, yes, hundreds of thousands, in these islands who have not bent the Jrpee to this modern and most loathsome of Baals. In order that man £ Should learn to despise “the manly art of self defence,” a new idol has been created for this modern philosophy, the idol of human life. Every practice that can in any way tend to endanger life or limb must bo condemned. Those who do not hesitate to immure in unhealthy factories hundreds of men, women, and'children, in order that they, the speculative employers, may become rich and leave large fortunes behind theta, complain of the brutality of football, and pass laws to stop prize fighting. I his maudlin philosophy strikes at the foundations upon which great nations are built, and from which springs the manly strength and courage of their sons. The world without active patriotism and devotion to duty would be a world without poetry, without beauty, but if wanting in that sturdy valour which both causes and enables its possessor to fight for his country, the world would indeed be but “blank chaos come again,” Patriotism is in my opinion the mother of all the virtues. All that is best and noblest in man is cradled in the love of home and country. From it springs that martial glory, without which no nation can be great or last long. But for this glory, which like the forest tree takes root and spreads, the country must pay in blood, the blood of her bravest sons. Happy the country which has devoted soldiers and sailors always ready to die for her, and thrice happy those who fall fighting in their country’s cause, Man’s brief spell of life here is soon over. For each of us the day approaches quickly when the spirit must leave this frail body “of crumbling bones and windy dust.” When the end comes the soldier who can truthfully say that he has striven with all his mind and strength to do his duty to his Queen and country with honest, humble loyalty, will, I believe, realise that be has truly served his Hod, and that the life he consecrated to the service of England was certainly worth living, Fortnightly Review.