WAR TOPICS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 8, 26 January 1942, Page 2

WAR TOPICS

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THEY PULL THEIR WEIGHT CITIZENS OF BRITAIN IN WAR TIME A PEOPLES BATTLE This is a people's war; a war in which every citizen of Britain, soldier or civilian, must face equal danger and make equal sacrifice. This is a war of paradox, a war in which the citizens of Britain, fighting for freedom of speech and aelio>n, have freely and of their own accord asked that they should be compelled to make ever-growing sacrifices. The people asked for food rationing long before their ration cards were delivered to them. People with their purse strings already tightened urged the adoption o.f a Budget as drastic as that of last April. People, while the call-up ot women was still or- a voluntary

basis, clamoured for equal conscription, of men and women. Millions of families have been broken up as men and women have joined the armed forces, as mothers and children have been evacuated from blitzed, vulnerable areas. Daughters as well as sons leave their homes for service in the forces and factories. More than a million mothers and children have been evacuated, leaving homes behind. Women leave the care of homes to work daily in the factories. Other homes, perhaps left intact, adapt themselves to new ways of life as evacuated children and workers arc billeted on them. Already half a million households havp taken in strangers. Careers made and in the making may vanish overnight. Men must abandon work for the battlefield, the Irgh seas or the

air. Young men and women must sacrifice precious years of training. Heads of non-essential industries must either close a once-flourishing business o.r, at best, amalgamate with another.

Taxation High So the giant burden of taxation falls on many incomes already depleted and more upon the rich than upon the poor. Of an income of £500 a year a married man with one child pays £101 tax. A. single person earning £500 pays a tax of £156. A man Avith an income of more than £20,000 a year gives up 19s 6d in eA 7 ery pound of income. Yet the people save. With taxes already deducted from their incomes, they \7oluntarily saA r e and lend Avhat they can. from the poorest. avlio convert their farthing a Aveek into a penny saving stamp each month, to the wealthy Avho buy defence bonds at £100 a time. BetAveen them in nearly two years of Avar ancl saving if'N'y have totalled more than £2,500,000,000. They turn savings to practical account and lend to buy weapons of war. Last Saturday the citizens of Leeds began "Warship" Savings Week." They had planned to adopt the Ark Royal. When the neAvs came that their ship had sunk, thev straiglitAvay pledged themselves to build a neAV Ark Royal, setting themselves as a goal £5,250,000 for tho cost.

Patched Elbows Clothes coupons, meagre as they are, were Avelcomed as a step towards further equality o*f sacrifice. The Queen and Mrs Brown alike are wearing last Avinter's coats —and they Avill be wearing them again next Avinter. Sixty-six coupons make the allowance for a year. A man's suit takes 26, a pair otf Avomen's stockings, 2<. The men and Avomen of Britain work so hard they arc left with no time to Avorry. It is calculated a Avorki.ng fctree of 20,000,000 people is doing approximately 110,000,000 jobs—by Avorking in Avhat were once leisure hours. They spend CA r enings and Aveek-ends on Home Guard and A.R.P. duty. They Avork on allotment and raise pigs and chickens. Older Avomen give time voluntarily to Avork for canteens, relief funds and evacuees. The ordinary man accepts these sacrifices cheerfully. He may grumble and call it "exercising his right of free speech." but at heart he accepts them because he knoAvs this: that when the battle is fought and Avon, his priA r ileges and his rights, material and spiritual, Avill be returned to him. And in his oavii commonsense Avords, "If the Germans Avon, we should give up more than this and never get it back."

MAN OF MANY PARTS M. MOLOTOFF, THE RUSSIAN HAMMER SERVICE FOR SOVIET Molotov—Soviet Russia's Foreign Commissar—is less a man than a legend to the outside world, writes Eileen Bigland in the London Daily Mail, of October 11. He is was who interviewed the English, French, German, Finnish, Estonian, Latvian. Lithuanian and Turkish delegates in the last uneasy days of peace; he. .signed the Soviet-German Paet -with Von Ribbentrop and thereafter conducted all negotiations with the Germans; he arranged trade agreements and received ambassadors; not !ong ago he signed, with Sir Stafford Crfpps, tlie .Anglo-Soviet Alliance, and now he presides the Moscow talks with the Anglo-Ame-rican Mission People call him Stalin's shadow; they are very far from right.

In appearance lie is the exact antithesis of the popular idea of a Russian. Of medium height and with a burly figure, lie dresses in sober dark suits of poor quality which are generally a little shiny at the elbows. His walk is stiff and ungainly. His face is round, pale and adorned by a droopy moustache, while the eyes behind their thick it 1 asses look rather like marbles. T saw him once walking on the' Red Sauarc with Stalin. He had removed Ihe glasses, and the eyes were extraordinarily keen, the eyes of a man with a very definite will of his own. I' saw him again when he, together with Stalin and other Kremlin leaders, was a pall bearer at Maxim fiorki's funeral. I was struck then by the smooth whiteness of his hand as it gripped the pole of the bier, for the hands of his fellows were brown and horny.

A Hardi Worker Despite his ungainliness, Molotov is meticulously neat in his habits, and his capacity for hard work is as prodigious as Stalin's own. At home he is a devoted husband and father, and is a strict vegetarian—an unusual thing for a Russian to be. Molotov is a man of highest integrity and gives a wholehearted r loyalty to Russia. His knowledge of her problems is amazingly complete. It was he who organised the terrific drive to utilise the huge resources of Asiatic Russia. His methods were ruthless and his decisions swift. It. was Molotoiv who set up cottonspinning mills in Turkestan and exported the finished product to the Far East, at such speed that he captured foreign markets from under the very noses of European competitors (including Lancashire) before they were aware of what was going on. And it was Molotov who stalled the Germans so that Russia might have time in which to consolidate her defences. Old Friends

His name is a pseudonym—the word means "hammer" in Russian; and one imagines he and Stalin— "Man of Steel" —chose it wUh certain. relish in the early days of the Soviets because hammer and steel march Avell together, and the tAVo men have been friends for a very long time. They haA r e much in cornmen, and no sooner had Stalin come to power than he sent for Molotov, perhaps partly because through his own long years of service to Lenin he knew how necessary single-mind-ed dcAotion Avas, and as the struggle 1 to perfect the first Five Year Plan developed he found his choice fully justified. Step by step Molotov ad-A-anced behind his friend and leader, yet so unobtrusively did he move that the Russian people themselves AA r ere astonished Avhen he emerged as Stalin's mouthpiece.