THE WAR EFFORT

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 186, 3 May 1940, Page 11

THE WAR EFFORT

Everybody Must Do His Share

PRIME MINISTER SPEAKS

TO FARMERS

Everybody must do his share to help New Zealand’s war effort, said the Prime Minister, Mr. Fraser, addressing a parly of Southland farmers at dinner in the Exhibition restaurant last night.

This was an uncertain-world to live in, be said. When the promoters of the Exhibition and the general public put up (he share capital, no one had imagined, though the world was in a state of uncertainty, that the warclouds would burst so disastrously. However, fate had decreed that the British Commonwealth should stand shoulder to shottldef with her French ally in defence of humanity, democracy, and all that was decent iu human life.

They could not know wbat the future would bring, but could not expect everything to go according to the schedule they would like, and the enemy to vanish in front of them. They had a determined enemy, well organized, unscrupulous and cruel. The German people bad allowed their finer sentiments and feelings to be trodden under foot. The Nazis would not cease voluntarily till they had dominated the world. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Denmark and Norway were all gone. Nobody knew who would be attacked next. The neutrals wete afraid even to show friendliness toward Britain. It appeared that Britain and France must carry on side by side till the victory was achieved for the cause of humanity. In this war there' was a part for everybody. Everyone had a duty to perform, not only the men going overseas. He had no doubt that New Zealand, like the rest of the British Commonwealth, once she had put her band to the plough would 'plough right to the end of the furrow, Mr. Fraser recalled his impressions of wartime Britain during his recent visit to the Old Country. The British people had organized themselves in a way that made him feel proud to be British. . The New Zealand farmers likewise were doing their best to see the country was fully organized in field, factory and dockyard. Everything, possible was being done to achieve the victory for the ideals for which they stood. Colonel D. Pobtinger, also a guest at the dinner, said the New Zealanders, whom he had served alongside on sev-ei-iil occasions during the Great Waf, had made a great reputation not only, as soldiers but as gentlemen. The men of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force, whom he had seen, were in no way inferior. He had never seen a finer body of men than the second echelon, and he had seen none keener. The only thing that worried him was that there were not enough men at present coming forward to keep up the supply of reinforcements.