CORRESPONDENTS' VIEWS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 175, 27 July 1942, Page 2

CORRESPONDENTS' VIEWS

"LAST MAN: LAST SHILLING"

(To The Editor)

On a moment's reflection, the world outside this complacent little Dominion must marvel that throughout three years of war she can spare not only a fully reinforced Expeditionary Force, always in the forefront of the Empire's battles, but battalions of timber men for Britain, enterprising airmen by the thousand to bomb Germany and fight the Battle for Britain, and thousands of officers and men for the Royal New Zealand Naval Volunteer Reserve overseas. AH this from one and a half million souls. No other Empire country outside Britain has conscription for overseas military service. Our airmen and sailors continue to depart with astonishing regularity. Japan suddenly swoops on the Pacific, menacing New Zealand. There is not a whisper, not a hint, of any consideration of a change in policy. Is our thinkinggeared to the last war? Are our politicians blind to the immediate menace of the barbarous Japanese? When our men were fighting on Gallipoli in the last war killing and being killed by Turks, there were British generals who declared that men not engaged on the Western Front killing Germans were "wasting their time." Have we similar minds in high places to-day? Shall we not want all our sons—and more than our own sons—to kill Japanese here on the soil of New Zealand? Or in New Zealand somehow magically protected, so that no Japanese menace exists? In a word, is it the wish of the majority of the people of this country, whose sons have already performed so many valorous deeds, that New Zealand ignore the Japanese and continue sending against the Nazis the last man and the last shit ling? G.V.P.