A CRY FROM EUROPE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 8, Issue 72, 11 May 1945, Page 4

A CRY FROM EUROPE

NOW that the official celebrations of peace have died down ; now that we have settled back to the idea that > there is but Japan to overcome, and that the combined combatant forces of England, America, Russia, France, and most of the countries hitherto involved will be devoted towards crushing that treacherous little foe; we in New Zealand have a definite duty to perform, and the sooner we realise it the better. We live in a land of plenty. Poverty is unknown. It is therefore impossible for us to set any guage upon the- abject misery of tens of millions of suffering people on the European continent. Now that the armistice has thrown down the armed barriers which have hitherto screened from the world the full picture of suffering, it will be for us to replenish, clothe and feed the typhusridden millions who are today without homes, without raiment, without sustenance and indeed without hope. Every returned man sighs with satisfaction on his return. This land of ours, he says, is second to none ; fruitful and fertile, it produces in abundance. The fields and hills teem with sleek cattle, the waters teem with fish; one has but to cultivate in order to reap the reward of a bountiful nature. We can and do export a hundred times more than we consume in products of the land. We know and realise that with a greater farming population we could double and treble our present figures. This is our job in the post war work of reconstruction. We have cpntinued on very much in the same manner of life* to which we have accustomed ourselves. We have been undisturbed by the distant rumbles of the conflict overseas. It will therefore be not only our duty, but our privilege to assist th£ victims of Europe;. Our fields must produce more than ever before; our herds must provide new stock to replace the slaughtered beasts who went to feed the Nazi Armies; our- flocks must produce more mutton and wool to feed and warm the pitiful refugees of France, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Czechoslavakia, Yugoslavia, Greece, Norway and Germany herself. We who have potentially much, owe this solemn pledge to those who innocent of the causes' of war, now have nothing, and who will perish unless they receive the means of life quickly.