The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Tuesdays and Fridays. TUESDAY, NOV. 16, 1943 SOVIET HATRED

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 24, 16 November 1943, Page 4

The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Tuesdays and Fridays. TUESDAY, NOV. 16, 1943 SOVIET HATRED

THOSE who read of the horrible misuse and beastial treatment of 4000 Russian prisoners of war in the week-end cable news, and as related by a New Zealand repatriated prisoner who was a personal eyewitness, will have been nauseated by the depths of torture and depravity to which the teutonic mind is capable of descending. At the same time they will have been struck by the thought almost equally as terrifying as to what, ghastly extremes the Soviet armies of vengeance will go when they in their turn will have the German populace at their mercy. The thought leaves one cold with horror, in the knowledge of how vast will be the suffering of still more innocent people before the waves of hatred and folly have finally exhausted themselves. In studying the question one realises how futile it is for a member of any nation untouched by invasion or war to seek to judge or to venture a solution. When the war passions have become so inflamed that the combatants of either side, can only think of wreaking death and torture upon their helpless and defenceless opponents, then the brain of those combatants has ceased to be normal and rather than two nations at war in the normal conception of belligerent countries we have two lust-maddened peoples who have; swept aside all culture and the higher sense of human decencies in the one blind effort to kill and to destroy. Hatred, so deep rooted and brutal, that it will take generations to live down, has dominated the Soviet battlefronts, ever since Hitler launched his traitorous attack against his unsuspecting 'ally.' Hatred has characterised the bitter and bloody battles of Sabastopol, Stalingrad and Starraya Russa. Hatred has dictated the wholesale enslavement, murder and rapine which have been meted out by the German invaders to the helpless civilian populace. War on the Soviet front has assumed an affair which is diabolical in its intensity and prosecution. The most horrifying aspect however is yet to come., for as the flying columns of Stalin s cossacks sweep forward breaking a way for the vast and eager battalions of the Soviet armies of avengers the picture of Germany at their mercy is not a pretty one. Small wonder then, if the stories from neutral sources are to be believed, that the soul of Germany is fervently praying for the British and Americans to beat the Russians to Berlin, by staging the invasion of the European continent without a moment's delay.

WHAKATANE OF THE FUTURE

THE developmental plcSn submitted by the Whakatane Harbour Board to the Borough Council last week, envisages a potential commercial and shopping centre extending over the thirty acres of mudflats now situated at the rear of the present business section and the continuation of the thoroughfare known as the Strand in a straight line: at the rear of the Borough Council Chambers, with the famous Pohaturoa Rock as a focal feature which could be seen by all approaching the town. Speakers referred to the fact that the full, establishment of the plans would take a hundred years and that most of those present would not live ..to see its fulfilment. Viewed from the circumstances ruling at present and taking- into consideration the cramped nature of our present outlook, such assertions may seem well based and rational, but judging by Whakatane's rapid expansion during the past twenty-five years,, and basing its future growth on a manner commensurate with the settlement and consolidation of the Rangitaiki Plains over a similar term the possibilities of the spread of our town over a much shorter period than a century appears to be well within the bounds of possibility. If for instance a resident of fifty years ago could have described the growth of Whakatane into what it is to-day he would probably have been laughed at as an optimistic visionary. Just so our concep-i tion of the potential Whakatane suffers as a result of our unwillingness to speculate, upon possibilities. The Harbour Board has probably been responsible for the best service ever rendered this town from a civic point of view, for by careful and well-balanced planning it has now produced a scheme which will guide the town's expansion and ensure that it will be conducted on sound and modern lines.