SACRIFICE & SERVICE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 April 1939, Page 5

SACRIFICE & SERVICE

AN ANZAC DAY MESSAGE APPEAL BY PROMINENT EX-SOLDIERS. NEED FOR RECAPTURING SPIRITUAL ENERGY. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. The following statement in the form of an Anzac Day message to. the people of New Zealand, signed by men prominently known for their services during the Great War and since then on behalf of returned soldiers, was issued in Wellington last night:— • Tomorrow we honour the memory of , those who gave their lives in the gallant and glorious enterprise which united the manhood of Australia and New Zealand under the name of “Anzac.” They died in a belief in the triumph of a just cause and in the hope of enduring peace for those who remained, yet twenty-one years after the Armistice the threat of war once more hangs menacingly over the world, and differences of greater or less moment are continually arising between the nations. We feel that the time has come for much more than a ceremonial annual remembrance of their sacrifice. However excellent a thing it is that our people should so honour their war dead, we are convinced that something greater, some personal sacrifice, is demanded of us today. Only in a new quality of thinking, willing and living among all peoples, and first of all among ourselves, can we adequately and enduringiy honour their name and achievement. In a letter to the London ‘Times,” during the September crisis, Field Marshal Lord Birdwood, with other leaders of the armed forces and of other sections of national life, eloquently described the true foundation for the lasting peace which is the only memorial worthy of the sacrifice made by our comrades in the Great War. The signatories to the letter declared: “The strength of a nation consists in the vitality of her principles. Policy, foreign as well as domestic, is for every nation ultimately determined by the character of her people and the inspiration of her leaders; by the acceptance of their lives and in their policy of honesty, faith and love as the foundations on which a new world may be built. Without these qualities, the strongest armaments, the most elaborate pacts, only postpone the hour of reckoning.” postpone the hour of reckoning.” The letter goes on to affirm that the real need of the day is moral and spiritual rearmament and that were we, together with our fellow men everywhere to put the energy and resourcefulness into this task that we now find ourselves obliged to expend on national defence, the peace of the world would be assured. We earnestly commend to the people of this country the message which we nave quoted. We commend also to them as the urgent need of our country the rebuilding of the moral fibre of our citizenship, and the recapturing of the spiritual energy that inspired our pioneer forebears that under Goa s direction this young nation may take her part in the regeneration of mankind. The signatories are:— MAJOR-GENERAL SIR ANDREW MAJOR-CTNERAL SIR DONALD brigadier-general w. melCOLONEL SIR STEPHEN ALLEN. COLONEL A. E. STEWART. COLONEL C. H. WESTON. HON. W. PERRY. M.L.C UIEUT-COLONEL A. COWLES.