TWO YEARS AGO—THE WAR DRIFT

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 198, 31 December 1941, Page 4

TWO YEARS AGO—THE WAR DRIFT

AT the threshold of the fateful year of one thousand nine hundred and Forty-two we stand, in speculation. The birth of this momentous year finds us nearer the realities of war than ever before in our brief history. How much has happened since the lighthearted days of Christmas and New Year of 1939-40, when, the men of the First Echelon of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force were home on final leave? Then,, it seemedi, they were to leave for a dim and distant war, which an ambitious, though unreal personage, named Hitler had fomented by the brutal invasion of Poland. Those were the days of the catch song — ''We'll hang out our washing on the Seigfried Line," of the security afforded by the 'impregnable' Maginot Line, of the growing ties of understanding between Great Britain and France, a combination which was regarded as unbreakable. No one dreamed that the war could ever spread beyond the bounds of war-sick Europe! It was smaller in its scope, limited in its range, and confined to viscious cannonading between the rival lines of concrete along the French border. It was a 'picnic-war' which produced no casualties, and nursed its victims gradually into a false sense of makebelieve. Two eventful and saddened years have dragged by, the war chorus slowly reaching to a crescendo of horror and violence which has now engulfed the whole world. New Zealand, the emerald island of peace and prosperity in the Southern seas stands face to face with the possibilities of war upon her own shores, for the flames have spread, from Europe, throughout Asia, leapt the Atlantic and raged through the Americas. A month ago it burst forth with dramatic suddenness in the islands of the Nor-eastern Pacific. Two. powerful fleets stalk each other in the waters which have never known a major naval engagement. Borneo,, Sarawak, the Dutch East Indies, the Phillipines and the outlying island possessions of both Britain and America have felt the force of the invader. In the Malay the major struggle goes en for the key fortress of Singapore which holds-the fate of Australasia in its own ability to keep the gateway to the Southern Pacific. Two years ago it was possible to count the belligerent states upon the fingers of a single hand; to-day it is possible to count upon'the same hand the states which still remain neutral—Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Afghanistan. Latin America, has by virtue of the American convention, practically been forced to declare war upon the Japanese aggressors. There never was war waged upon such a scale, nor was there ever such a conflagration of destructive forces let loose upon earth. If Armageddon is a fact, verily the present war must approach its dimensions. The year 1942 lies ahead w T ith the prospects for tortured humanity, not the brightest. For ourselves, so long used to adopting the: role of spectators in the world's periods of crisis, the test of immediate danger, has come as a jolt which has sobered our nature, and brought about the order for full mobilisation of the country's fighting men. We face whatever issue the new year brings forth boldly and without flinching, confident that if the test should come we will stand up to it with the same fortitude and courage, which characterises our men in Libya, the first drafts of whom lightheartedly left these shores two short years ago.