THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 264, 6 August 1942, Page 4

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Comments —Reflections

Give me again my hollow tree, a crust of bread, and liberty.—Pope.

The dynasty of the great American Presidents is clear and unmistakable. Washington, Jefferson, Andrew Jackson —for u certain primitive barbaric stature—Lincoln (almost the greatest man that ever lived), Theodore Roosevelt, and now Franklin Delano of the same name and stock. If there was nothing else to be said for the American conception of democracy, and how much there is, the ability of the Federal Republic to place such men in supreme office would be .sufficient justification for the United States of America; for they are among the kings of men, the enduring masters and leaders of mankind. It has been a great achievement.—Arthur Bryant in the London ‘'Observer.”

“Hitler has never conquered the opinion of Europe. The Nazis’ military machine has broken armies, enslaved governments, confiscated businesses, , but their ‘new order’ has not captured the minds of men. Indeed, all along the ‘Third Front’ of opinion the battle is going against Hitlerism, not only in rebellious Czechoslovakia, Norway and Yugoslavia, but in apparently obedient Italy and Germany. How well are the Allies fighting on that front? Does their political warfare promise to play any such part as Woodrow Wilson’s played in 1918? Is there any real hope that the fires of anti-Axis feeling can be blown into flames of revolt that will shorten the war? Some acute observers believe there is—if the Allies will move intelligently and boldly. They believe the Allies should wield offensively on the opinion front two sharp weapons —promise and threat. Promises for the people in Germany and Italy, threats for the leaders.” —“Christian Science Monitor” editorial.

“Speculation on how long Germany can stand air-raids on the new scale is inevitable, if in some sense idle,” says “Janus,” in “The Spectator.” “The new scale, as Mr. Churchill warned the House of Commons, will, of course, not be uniformly maintained. The difference between the raids on Britain a year and more ago and the raids on Germany today is vital. Bad as things were we always had reason to believe that Germany was exerting her utmost effort, and that the power of the defence, both in fighters and In guns, was growing steadily. Germans can cherish no such belief. First of all our attacks on her are much more than twice as heavy as her attacks on us. Secondly, there is reason to think her defence has reached its maximum capacity, and at that it can take no more than a 4 per cent, toll of the assailants. Third, and much the most important of all, the certainty that American raids will be added to and co-ordinated with British leaves the average German no room for anything but black despair.”

“I was ‘pre-bridges’ in San Francisco and pre-talkies in Los Angeles. But a change more important than talkies, bridges, floods or earthquakes had come over the ebullient California I had known. War was at its doorstep. It is true that war isn’t near in miles; even Pearl Harbour is 2000 miles off, and the Coral Sea 6000; but the Pacific is the doorstep of California, and the war seems nearer here than it did on the Atlantic Coast, which has only the Atlantic between it and the other end of the Axis. This has been brought home to California in. ways that are all dramatic if not all equally impressive. It was at San Francisco that the wounded from Pearl Harbour were landed. It is from the ports on this coast that men and ships and ’planes are being sent with increasing momentum to the battlefront where Americans are directly engaged, to Asia and Australia. It is this coast that Japan may well attack, if only for prestige reasons. In the great game of hide-and-seek now being played on the Pacific it is possible, perhaps more than possible, that a Japanese raider, a Japanese carrier, may slip through. The great summer fog-bank that for centuries hid San Francisco Bay from explorers coming from the sea may hide the Japanese long enough for them to do some damage. To the North, Alaska leans over to Asia, a potential jumping-off ground for attack on Asia, and a possible target of a desperte Japanese attempt to get in first.” —D. W. Biogan, in “The Spectator.”

On October 24, 1940, at 8.30 p.m., Gestapo agents eame into my office in Oslo. One put a revolver to my chest and shrieked, “You are hoping for British victory; you are arrested.” They took me to the notorious prison at Mollergaten. By some freak of fate they failed to find a pencil in my pocket. This became my most valuable possession during my imprisonment. It recorded many joys and sorrows. It may sound absurd to talk of joys. Far from it. There was the joy of meeting men, condemned to death, who could laugh and joke because they wanted to die smiling, as a final gesture of defiance. To meet men from all walks of life whose courage and fortitude turned that,prison into a monument of freedom. And there was the memory of the unknown lady which will be with me till I die. No one in that prison went through more than she, for she was unmercifully tortured foi - weeks. We caught glimpses of her occasionally when she was taken for a solitary walk in the prison yard by the Gestapo guards, just to keep her strength up for more ordeals. She was beautiful, erect and with a mass of golden hair —an incarnation of courage and loveliness. From day to day we noticed her cheeks grow paler, but her head never lost its defiant ereetness. Her chin was up always, and they got nothing out of her. And she defeated them to the end, when tuberculosis claimed her, as so many of the rest of us. It was one of our great sorrows when we saw her no more, a sorrow tinged with great pride. That was one of the many things my pencil recorded.—Schanche Jonasen, in 8.8. C. “Listener.” To the Soldier. •Soldier, marching o’er the sea, Young and gay and strong and free, Marching through the ancient lanes, Marching through the mud and rains, In -the changing of the light You may see another knight Who rode forth for liberty.

Blue of eyes and brown of hair, Tall and strong and debonair, lie was young and eager, too, He would make the world anew. In the last rays of the day If you see him, soldier, say Wo remember, we still care. •—Aline Hughes,