Lest Me Forget

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 3, Issue 5, 1 November 1924, Page 17

Lest Me Forget

SIX years ago the World War came to its appointed end and brought relief which no words can paint to a world torn by the anguish and suffering of the greatest cataclysm known to history. Those of us who passed through that tremendous experience and survived have been witnesses of the mightiest epoch for good or ill in all annals of mankind. o o o What does it mean to us? There are two anniversaries which, so long as the British Empire exists, will be observed with all befitting solemnity. The day when we entered the World War and determined the whole future course of civilisation by our decision, and the day when by sacrifices which shook the whole Empire to its age-old foundations we obtained at the point of the sword a victorious armistice over a beaten and humiliated enemy. Never can there be moral health and strength in us again as a nation unless we recognise and remember these days as the greatest and noblest in the long, glorious tale of our race. When we bow our heads in memory of the dead, we do them no honour unless our hearts are lifted up. When we mean to give our meed of thankfulness, not only to those who lost life and limb at the call of duty, but also to the surviving comrades who took an equal risk in battle and service by land or sea or air, we do them no credit unless we are convinced in our souls that it was worth while. Nor can we do them credit unless we resolved so to act and to think further as to make it yet more worth while. Proud let us be of all who fought and worked, and very proud of the Mother Country that bore us and enables us by the majesty of her tradition and by the habit of freedom and duty wherein we are nurtured to do what the dead and living did in these days. “Never the lotus closes, never the wild fowl walces, But a soul goes out on the east 'wind that died for England’s salce. Man or woman or children, mother or bride or maid, Because on the hones of the English the English flag is stayed.” Let us then, with all humility of heart and thankfulness of spirit, pay homage to all those who in the hour of national need gladly offered themselves that we might live, and that our sacred inheritance of freedom might be handed down by us unsullied to our children. We had our quarrel just. We changed the fortunes of the world. Without us the Beast of Militarism would have conquered Europe and dominated the world. Without us the United States could not have hindered it and would themselves, unaided, have soon been forced to bow the neck to the conqueror. Their gold would not have availed them an iota, but as spoils for the victors. The British Empire alone stood firm and undismayed; counted the cost but deemed it gain if she by sacrifice could safeguard for mankind the right to live in Peace and Honour. o o o All the ideals we visioned in our best and highest moments in that inspired August of 1914 may yet be recognised as a result of our intervention, of our immense and manifold exertion, our unshakeable endurance and final victory. Every English-speaking sense of the world destiny would have been lost by our abstention or by our defeat.

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— And if posterity should ask of me What high, what base emotions keyed weak flesh To face such torments, I would answer: You! Not for themselves, O daughters, grandsons, sons, Your tortured forebears wrought this miracle; Not for themselves, accomplished utterly This loathliest task of murderous servitude; But just because they realized that thus, And only thus, by sacrifice, might they Secure a i vorld worth living in—for you ” Gilbert Frankau “ The Judgement of Valhalla ”

Unprepared, we paid a terrible price in blood and money for our unwillingness to believe that such an appalling catastrophe could ever happen. The effort of Britain and the Dominions with their free, untrained democracy has never been equalled in the history of the world. . Kitchener stamped out of the ground and within nine months threw into the field over a million fighting men of all arms. o o o A main cause of the war, no doubt, was that Austria-Hungary had become impossible. It was certain that the ponderous and obsolete structure would be shattered sooner or later by the imprisoned nationalities pent up beneath. After 1913 the advisers of Francis Joseph saw no hope but in a preventive war deliberately made at the first plausible opportunity. The opportunity was seized when the Heir-Apparent was assassinated. The first supreme fault in Berlin was when German policy encouraged its ally to begin the war by the armed attack on Serbia which one firm word from the Kaiser would have prevented. Another supreme fault was to repulse Sir Edward Grey’s efforts for arbitration and delay, and to make the fatal plea that the question ‘ ‘ could not be submitted to a European Areopagus. ’ ’ The third supreme fault was the invasion of Belgium and the violation of that neutrality which German Governments had sworn to respect. These were the causes of the actual outbreak, though the struggle for the military hegemony of Europe has never died. Romans, Huns, Poles, Spaniards, French and Germans have each in their day made their bid for supreme power, yet after the Franco-German war of 1870 the basis of a lasting peace might well have been secured. The seizure and the retention of Alsace and Lorraine made war inevitable. Bismarck realised the situation, strove to avoid it by returning the lost provinces to

Prance, but was dismissed by the Kaiser with his purpose unfulfilled. Henceforth the fate of the twenty million casualties in the Great War was certain. Armament was piled on armament. The very existence of civilisation was threatened. o o o The Hohenzollern and Hapsburg empires and dynasties, based on militarism, were shattered as if they had never existed when the military power created by their rulers was crushed. Their common citizens had the scales plucked from their eyes and, perceiving the enormity of their useless sacrifices, of their own free will drove out their rulers. o o o This was, then, surely what brought us into the war and kept us in it to the end. Never did Britain, our country or any country, do a thing greater and nobler than when she took up arms to vindicate the fundamental principles of religion, of international law,* of faith and of safety. The attack on France, the unprovoked invasion of Belgium, was not the act of a nation driven mad by the heat of battle. In 1891, more than twenty years prior to the outbreak of Armageddon, the plan of invasion was drawn up by Count Schieffen. With the naked, cold efficiency of their race the Germans deliberately formulated their plan for ruthlessly invading a neutral nation, and each succeeding year sought to perfect their criminal design. This was a crime upon which the judgment of history can never hesitate. We were a guarantor of Belgium. Yet there were those who sought to prevent our intervention. There still are those who decry our action. It would have lowered our name and our character for ever. As we escaped that ignominy, let us not yield now ignobly in our hearts to a regret for the sacrifices we made. ‘ ‘ Palaverer Inglis ’ —‘ ‘an Englishman ’s word”has passed into an idiom in the courtly Spanish language. Let there be sincerity in our mourning as in our thanksgiving. Let us not suffer it to be said that we fought and wrought in a false cause. A truer cause the world’s struggles never saw. Without that complete and shining conviction our monuments are in vain. o o o What was the measure of our achievement? Do we understand yet what we did? Great as was the cause, greater was our national effort. The message of Haig to the armies during the retreat in March, 1918, must surely never be forgotten. “Fight with your backs to the wall; if you fail, the world is lost.” When there is so much depression and self-doubt as a result of confusing the merits of our war efforts with the errors of the peace, it is time • that we sound a trumpet call which will ring through our land, re-establishing our pride in our own race and vindicating our own land and our people. Though we see around us, living in affluence while we strive to build up anew the ' fortunes of our house, those who through privy influence, through greed, through cowardice, in the name of their womenfolk or through base reasons evaded their obligation to their country, or waxed rich at its expense, what matter! Let our hearts beat high. We have done our duty and, whatever our material needs, we know that we acted

rightly, and should the necessity arise would yet again take the same course. o o o The French Army at the beginning was wrong in its fixed ideas to an extent which imperilled all. Even the German Army—and this was the Nemesismissed its mark at the Marne, in spite of the invasion of Belgium. The British Fleet did not miss its mark. The Navy grasped the command of the seas in the first hour of the conflict and held it to the end in the manner which did more than anything else to bring the Central Powers to the ground. Jutland was no Trafalgar, but the continued collective effort of the Fleet and of the whole nation which sustained it was a mightier triumph of seapower than Nelson and Pitt, or any British generation before them, ever knew. To the true imaginative sense the fight of our Navy and our merchant seamen against the submarines was an epic of heroism and resource never matched afloat and below. o o o What of the land? “England,” the great Moltke said, “has no army, and under her Parliamentary system can never create one.” Without the Old Contemptibles thrusting steady into the gap between Kluck and Bulow, the Battle of the Marne never could have been won. Nothing in the Peninsular War matched for splendour of fibre and significance of results the stand at Ypres, which saved the Channel. When ‘ ‘ Kitchener ’s Armies ’ ’ threw themselves against the unparalleled fortifications of the Somme battlefield they shook German military power to the base in a manner from which it never quite recovered again, frightful as was the cost to our new-levied ranks. German historians have written that even the long, dull slaughter to which we exposed our men at Passehendaele was priceless to the Allies in their darkest hour, when the French Army was recovering from its desperate crisis after Nivelle defeat when Eussia had gone out of the war; and not for many a weary day yet could American divisions come into action. o o o The solid stand north of the Somme foiled all Ludendorff’s plans and hope for a decisive break through in March, 1918. No advancing strokes of a British Army ever matched Haig’s hammer blows toward the end. As well as barring all the seas of the world against the enemy, we fought in Belgium, France, Italy and the Balkans; in Asia and Africa. We held Egypt, conquered Mesopotamia and mastered Palestine by the most brilliant single action of the wholeconflict. In the records of the drama of war, what range of effectual performance eclipses this? But it is often said by both French and German writers that the British, though signal in courage and obstinacy, were inferior in intelligence. What of the anti-submarine devices? Above all, what of the tank? It was the most original instrument of the war. Authoritative German military writers, not prone to excessive generosity of recognition where the British Army is concerned, but often fair, have said that the tank was probably the decisive idea of the war on land. When Mangin marked the turning point of the year of victory by breaking into the German flank out of the forest of Yillers-Cotterets, he advanced with a fleet of tanks, and their part was as important in all the subsequent offensives up to the Armistice. Last, but not least, when the war ended we had created, with so little to start from, the strongest of all the winged cohorts of the air. o o o We do not grudge America more, and much more, than the exact merit her eventual entry into the war deserved, and the results, moral and actual, which her armies exacted, but in the light of events we know that she did but make a sure result still surer. Her total casualties were exceeded in a single battle by oursthe huge monetary outlay to which she points in argument was chiefly of no service on the field of battle, and was mostly expended uselessly for the benefit of those who invariably seize upon a moment of national emergency to defraud their country. America must ever be held responsible for much of the misery, the depression and the

chaos which post-war has existed in Great Britain and in Europe. Her refusal to subscribe to the League of Nations Covenant, her insistence on full CO uruuo VJU V UIAUJ-1 Ly UCi lUOJ.O OH. Xll j! repayment of moneys expended in America to provide the wherewithal to win the war for her as much as for ourselves, and her demand for a share in whatever reparations are eventually extracted , from Germany make her appear a harsh figure. As the honour and integrity of Great Britain and the Dominions stands high to-day deservedly, that of America has never stood so low in the estimation of the world. Britain, through her altruism and loftiness of character, jeopardised her very existence in the defence of the right of man —she has paid to America the enormous debt which she contracted, not for herself, but for her allies, and, in addition, has agreed to cancel the major part of debts due to her. We have, indeed, cause to be proud of our people. o o o We are, however, among those who view America present attitude as a passing phase, a reaction caused by their natural antipathy to militarism; and through having been once burnt, the dread of being involved again in the holocaust of world war has driven them, provincial minded as the majority of their citizens are, into the determination that, unmoved by the tragic events elsewhere in the world, they will at least not allow themselves to suffer. Their national idealism and the great common-sense inherited by the Anglo-Saxon portion of their inhabitants must eventually reassert itself. The lofty-mindedness of Washington, of Lincoln and of Wilson yet lives in the national life, and the time is not far distant when America will realise that she alone with the British Empire can guide the destinies of civilisation along the path which the tenets of Christianity point, o o o Let us hold up our heads and teach our children, that they may transmit it to their children, the grandeur of these memories as a birthright for evermore. We living, are a part of all this that has been. No new nation that is free could have been free without us. No ally that stands to-day could have stood without us. No League of Nations could have been brought into existence without us. And though the peace has failed as yet to bring about the restored and reconciled world which was desired at the white summit of our dreams — us there could have been no hope, so far as concerns 'time and long beyond, for the ultimate deliverance of the world from war. With the clear, wholesome instinct of our people we reverence on these two great anniversaries in our history the brave and faithful men and women of all nations, and equally the brave and faithful among the plain German people, victims of their rulers, who loved their land as we love ours and did their duty as they saw it. But it is time and there is need to unfurl the banner of Britain’s glory— who are a simple people are content to remain in the shadow of her mantle, and though we know that our sacrifices were very real, yet we do not presume to exaggerate our services, knowing full well that our Motherland, in the greatness of her heart, will always overgenerously value our aid. Let us, however, in our own fair land, give honour to the living and to the dead of this Dominion of New Zealand which entered the war and helped to decide it by every variety of achievement in arms and work, and to remember that in these legendary transactions the British Empire was of one flesh and blood. If we treasure these things rightly in our hearts we cannot fail to benefit our country. “The tumult and the shouting dies, The Captains and the Kings depart; Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice — An humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget— lest we forget.”