NOTES AND COMMENTS

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 256, 28 July 1942, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

A promising start appears to have been, made in the reorganization of the system of collecting waste materials. The arrangement (announced last week) under-which householders may telephone the nearest public school when they have a bundle of paper, or a quantity of some other useful waste, ready for collection is simple and sensible, and the public will appreciate the importance of the part that school staffs and pupils have undertaken to play as volunteer “middlemen” of the salvage market. .It remains for householders to play their essential part, first by conservation of material, secondly by the sorting and preparing of waste for collection, and thirdly by communicating at suitable intervals with school authorities. It is pointed out by the deputy-chairman of the Wellington Waste Committee that in Germany household waste is most carefuUy preserved and sorted —paper into one container, rags into another, rubber in a third and metal in a fourth. In this, as in the bigger things of the war, we can and must at least equal the enemy’s resource, and the challenge should be taken up on the domestic front .with real earnestness. Incidentally it is to be hoped that the systematic .collection, of waste will be extended to country districts, and some means found of overcoming the problem of greater distances between homesteads. Farms are a rich source of such waste materials as metals and rubber, and should not be overlooked by the organizers of the campaign.

War changes many things—even the generally accepted meanings of words. In the past the words “rebel’’ and “outlaw” did not always conjure’ up the” picture of a really bad type of man, for many of them were true patriots, the leaders of movements for liberation. But the word "renegade” has kept always a sinister meaning. It meant a deserter, a turncoat, and that type could never command even passing admiration. But the, modern renegade apparently belongs to a different category. In Java there are some Dutch troops that continue to fight the invaders. They have had to resort to guerrilla tactics but apparently are able to hamper the Japanese efforts to restore railway communication in the island. These men, according to the radio broadcasts from Batavia—sent out under Japanese direction—are “renegade Dutch troops,” although they do not seem to have qualified by deserting their cause or abandoning their beliefs. They are quite honourable renegades in the same way that Draja Mihailovich, the heroic leader of the anti-Axis forces in Yugoslavia, is a splendid rebel, and lon Minulescu, who harries the Axis from fastnesses in the Carpathians, is a worthy outlaw. Looking back over the record of the past two or three years the socalled renegades, rebels and outlaws seem to be more worthy of honour and reward than those usually grouped as the leaders of the Axis partnership.

It has been stated again and again that warfare has been largely mechanized, but the human factor is still the decisive one. The limit of man’s endurance places restrictions on the use of even the most powerful machine. And as mechanism has speeded up all movements, and added to the possibility of surprise, the strain on the human machine must have become more wearing. Experience has shown that even, picked troops must be rested A German war correspondent, in a broadcast from Berlin told the people of the Reich something about the strain on the units fighting in Egypt. "Our men (he said) for seven weeks have borne the brunt of an offensive such as the world has seldom seen. . . . They must now undergo the full force of positional warfare in which every hour strains the nerves to the utmost.” The maximum strain coines at ni"iit, and that is why the raids carried out by the Australian and New Zealand forces were of such importance, apart from the prisoners taken, the guns captured and the information obtained. Operations like that keep the enemv “on the stretch.” They dare not rest; they cannot relax, lie ceaseless bombardment is a thing that weary men can grow accustomed to, and get a little sleep, but the possibility of a raid banishes sleep. Already in this desert struggle members of the enemy forces, both German and Italian have surrendered because of sheer physical exhaustion. They could fight no longer. And there has been little, if any, slackening of the strain since then “Dav after day,” said the German correspondent, “Auchinleck flings in large tanks against our lines.” The movements may not achieve much in the way of visible gain, but they keep the enemy’s nerves nt strain The resources and reserve forces of the average man are amazing, but. thev are not unlimited, and it is possible to wear down the man in the machine, the man behind the gun, until his powers of resistance break.