CHANGES BETWEEN 1942 AND 1944

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 229, 24 June 1944, Page 8

CHANGES BETWEEN 1942 AND 1944

Bank Chairman’s Survey TENDENCY TO RELAX “Two years ago I spoke to you about the finance of the war and the impact of the war on our social and economic life, and I wish to refer to changes between then and now,” said Mr. A. T. Donnelly, chairman of the Bank of-New Zealand, in his address at the annual meeting in Wellington yesterday. “In 1942, we were in peril of invasion, almost close enough to invasion to feel the enemy’s scorching breath, the best of our manhood was already overseas. our trained forces here were small in number, we had few weapons and little material of war. We garrisoned Fiji and other Pacific outposts and, for the general purposes of Allied strategy, bared the country of its power of selfdefence. A great decision was then made for us. just how great, we will perhaps know better when the war, is won. We then turned to build up as best we could, "new forces at home. We worked hard and long in all the complex departments of our national life. We increased our primary and secondary production, not only for our own use, but for export abroad to those whose needs were greater than our own. We were united and steady in the face of common danger, and class and party disputes were damped down, if thev did not die out. We ean fairly say we did a lot and did it well. “In 1944, our situation is not the dame. The tide of war has receded from us and will not come back so far as we can see. We can say with reasonable confidence, and we should say it with humble and grateful thanksgiving to those whose lives, and deaths too, have made it possible to say it at all, that, when peace comes, we shall have been one of the few warring nations whose shores have not been violated, whose cities have not been laid flat and whose Citizens have stayed home at nights and gone to sleep. We have still our fighting men overseas in al] the services in every continent, in positions of danger and honour, bringing distinction everywhere to themselves and to their country. A New Part in the War.

“Now, as the line of battle has left us, we at home have a new part, and our role has been somewhat changed. Beca”sc we live in security’ and quiet, we have been given the task of producing for our own forces, our Allies and our kinsfolk in Britain, the food'they must have to live and to fight, for themselves and for us. It is a heavy task, without much glamour or romance, but it is one of honour and first necessity, because without food men cannot fight at all, without enough food men cannot fight their best. We have never failed in any duty laid upon us since the war began, and we know that the country will produce to the limit of the ability of its lands and those who work the lands. . “It is a fact that the primary production of New Zealand has progressively become less. This has been the cumulative result of scarcity of labour and fertilizers, high costs and unfavourable weather. Export prices have risen much less than import prices, which has thrown pur economy our of gear. The problem is now being given urgent consideration by the Government. As primary production has become less, rationing of butter and meat has been brought in to increase the surplus for export to Britain. Rationing will help but greater production is more important than rationing, and we hope that, by the joint efforts of citizens of all classes, the plans for greater production will soon succeed. “It should be said that the farmers of New Zealand deserve the praise and gratitude of everyone. There are many farmers who years ago saw their sons go off to war and who have since carried on without help and now find the pressure of years too much. Women have replaced men and many townspeople do not understand how much has been done since the war began by the country men and women under conditions of dullness, discomfort and overstrain.

If we hold a national and personal examination of our wartime conscience, we will find that, as the war has gone away from us, in some degree we have relaxed. To some of us. the war seems almost won. We lack the stimulus and impetus of danger near at hand. We have become numbed to great events during the last five years and there is a weariness which springs from the years of effort. We should not forget that our weariness is not the same as in Britain, where our kinsmen have come through the fifth winter of the war. They are in the fifth year of the black-out, the toughest trial of mind and nerve yet endured by man. and during their snring and early summer, they have waited poised and tense for the greatest assault of arms the world hns ever known. That assault has now begun. No matter what the fluctuations of the fight may be, we should not doubt or waver in our faith that it will in the end be won. Dormant Disputes Flame Up. “For many in this country money has been quickly and easily earned, particularly by the young. Taxation has blunted thrift and people are heard to say—‘What does it matter, the Minister of Finance pays all, or most of it?’ Hard men have become generous as they reach the excess profits line and there is extravagance in some respects unknown before the war.

“Political, class and trade disputes, dormant in 1942, have flamed up again Our democracy is kept alive and fresh' by free discussion, but the pressure of discussion and the threatened use of economic power by those who hold it, has sometimes forced on the Government and the people the choice of the expedient rather than the right. On all sides there are charges and counter charges of discrimination or unfairness in the distribution of benefits and the burdens of the war as between one class and another and one occupation and another. There is also the dislike of Government controls, whose restrictions and prohibitions affect so intimately our work and lives. “Many a war has been lost by softness, over-confidence, laziness, or by the lack of courage or determination to stick it out. This war must not be lost that way. We at home in New Zealand can help to win it by doing as much as we can as well as we can, by doing that which is nearest to our hand better than we have done it before. We should see and thankfully admit that we have the best wartime lot in all the world. As a spiritual exercise we should sometimes, when we complain of the scarcity of this or that, measure out for ourselves the British weekly ration of foods which we have in rich or even waste supply. We should recognize that in a time of war we cannot squeeze and elbow out one another and that the weight of the war cannot be thrown from one person or class to another as if we were a nation of children playing at ball. That great citizen sbldier. General Kippenberger, yon will remember, lost both feet in a mine explosion iust after he took command of our division. In a letter to’ New Zealand a few days after he was wounded, he said: ‘I nm a good enough soldier to have no feeling of complaint or disappointment about what happened or the time when it happened. It was a normal hazard of war.’ We should be good enough civilians to aspire to. if not altogether to achieve, a like high patriotic philosophy in matters touching only the material things of life. In these times ‘that try men’s souls’ we will surely not slacken tin nor lie down ‘in the fight to make room on the earth for honest men to live in.’ ”