TO SAVE MANKIND

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 September 1940, Page 7

TO SAVE MANKIND

BRITAIN FIGHTING ALONE. The Maori soldier who broadcast from Daventry recently in terms at once direct and eloquent said that he and his comrades had first seen Britain through the eyes of the English poets; and, since they had arrived had learned how correctly the great singers had pictured it. What is true of. the British scene is true of the British spirit, and there are echoes from the great wars of the past which sound strangely familiar today. Mr Churchill said: “It has come to us to stand alone in the breach and face the worst that a tyrant's might and enmity can d,o. . . . We are fighting alone, but not for ourselves alone.” Tennyson might well have been looking into the future as well as the past when he wrote in his Ode on the death of Wellington:— We are a people yet— Tho’ all men else their noble dreams forget, Confused by brainless mobs and lawless Powers, Thank Him who isled us here, and roughly set. His Saxon in blown seas and storming showers, We have a voice with which to pay the debt; Of boundless love and reverence and regret, To those great men who fought and kept it ours. And keep it ours, O God. from brute control, O statesmen, guard us, guard the eye, the soul, Of Europe; keep our noble England whole, And save the one time seed of freedom, sown. Betwixt a people and their ancient throne— That sober freedom out of which there spring's; Our loyal passion for our temperate kings, For saving that, ye help to save mankind.