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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Personal Volume

Pressing Needs

Pressing Needs.

Leaving, however, the causes of the barbarities in this is great war, let us consider some of the needs of peace. The first of those needs is that justice should be taught that wrong-doing not pay, There must be restitution, and there must, be retribution. What from these are to take, we must leave to the wise and humane statesmen who will sit round the table at the Peace Conference. There are pressing needs that we have as a people to consider. Our people have suffered greviously. Our nation needs restoration and re-building, though our task in this respect is easy page 7 compared with the task in front of France, of Belgium, of Serbia, of Roumania, and even of the United Kingdom. Alas! alas! we cannot restore our brave dead to life: they have died for us.

These are our martyrs, and their blood the seed
Of nobler futures. "Twas for us they died,
Keep we their memory green.

This be their epitaph, "Traveller, South or West,
Go, say at home we heard the trumpet call.
And answered. Now bebside the sea we rest,
Our end was happy if our country thrives,
Much was demanded, Lo! our store was small,
That which we had, we gave—it was our lives."

Let us resolve that the great and willing sacrifices they made were not in vain, but that they will lead to the establishment of a more noble nation, to a much higher and more humane social life.

We may class the Needs of Peace under three heads. Our Dominion has lost heavily in human life and financially, but perhaps we are better off than any other part of our Empire. So far as our loss of brave women and men are concerned, they cannot be replaced, and their loss must be borne with resignation.

Dealing with our finances, we find that our funded debt has enormously increased, and, unlike some other portions of our debt, it has been increased for works that will give us no direct return. Heavier taxation is in front of us, and we must meet our new burdens in the only way they can be met by honest people, namely, by hard work, thrift and enterprise. If we do not proceed in this way to meet our liabilities, page 8 we shall suffer much privation. We must expect that after a while the prices of our exports will fall, and this may entail the reduction of wages. Of course the fall in prices will mean that the cost of living will be less, but our capital for production will be restricted, and it may mean that living may have to be reduced to a lower standard. Everyone must deplore even the suggestion of such a thing, and the only way to keep the standard high is to resolve not to expend our means for that which profiteth not.