MODERN WAR

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 31, 20 March 1942, Page 5

MODERN WAR

REALLY A HUGE INDUSTRY

"Modern war is an industry, largely viewless, for a wholesale and monotonous output of death. These tire the years of national Avars. The whole of a nation's power, its mines, factories and workshops, its ships and agriculture, all the wealth and energy it directs toward daily bread, are deflected to> keep its integrity against an attack by a rival power. A battlefield is now a continent, and even neutral nations must share the catastrophe, like it or.lump it. They Avill be jostled and harassed. This cannot be helped. They must be alert to keep out of the way of propaganda, and of explosives wandering in the sea and falling from the sky. And they will not be able to manage it, not all of the time. So the enterprise and tenacity of factory hands have become as important as the stoutness of a nation's troops. The spirit of the girls at munitions must be equal to that of the men of the w r ar-ifleet. But that tenacity and spirit are more vulnerable than the ardours of the fighting forces. To maintain for a long and dreary period a routine ttgainst a distant foe is not like soldiering under the stimulation of flying bullets. It is more trying, in the long run, to keep undiminished the speed of wheels in a darkened factory, while unseen bombers are roving about, whose blows can be neither parried nor answered, than to look into the eyes of a mortal opponent, equally armed."—Mr H. M. Tomlinson, in "The Wind is Rising."