“Study To Be Quiet”

Evening Star, Issue 23379, 23 September 1939, Page 3

“Study To Be Quiet ”

The first thought, the instinctive desire- of every normal person at the present moment is, “ What can 1 do to help?” The answer may sound in the nature of an anti-climax —carry on with our jobs. For the majority of women the programme is not as easy as it sounds. . The daily round, the trivial task were never less inspiring; but, they are necessary, and in that thought lies. salvation. But this is not quite all. There are all sprts of .other ways, many of them passive, in which we can help. Not the feast'important is to decline to listen to rumours, and especially to refuse to pass them on. Rumour-mongering is a major preoccupation of the unemployed at any time; it is Satan’s particular'mischief for idle minds. _ In war time it is peculiarly fascinating, endowing the rumour-merchant with im’portance and a brief popularity. At the end of this first week of war I- have been told many hair-raising things. So, I am sure, have you. On Monday morning I was called from ray housework to the .telephone to bo t«>ld “as an absolute fact” that a submarine had been sighted in the Tasman; by the afternoon I heard that von Buckner was on his way to Auckland to repay some of the hospitality he had received lately: in the evening he had multiplied and increased into a company of torpedo boats sighted just outside Wellington. On-Tuesday I went to town. Twice during the morning I was told that bombers had been seen over Sydney—- “ and from there it’s nothing but a hop across to us.” This appeared to be a day of air rumours, for while T , was Lunching in a restaurant a friend came in with the information that London had been attacked in the night and Buckingham Palace was in ruins and “goodness only knows what’s happened to the poor King and Queen.” Naturally the tales soon came nearer home, and before I left town I had been told “ definitely ” (never has that overworked word been more exploited) that a strange aircraft had been seen flying very high over Greymouth, and that all towns were to black out that sight. ■Wednesday dawned, and it appeared tbit not only was London intact, but that no bombers had yet raided Hokitika. But my informants, when reproached for their alarmist reports, retired in good order with the cryptic ' comment that there was more in it than Ithought, and he who lived the-longest would see the most—a prophecy which I" thought probably true, even in war time. One added, as a juicy extra, that any way the schools were going to be shortly evacuated and that I had better be prepared to have my children home for the duration., I had scarcely recovered my temper from this encounter —you see. she rang off before I had time to deliver a very well-thought-out repartee, and central refused to answer •my insistent ring—when my next-door neighbour rushed in to say that a mutual acquaintance (whose name happens to be German and whose record is that of a gallant soldier in our last expeditionary force) had been caught trying to signal to the enemy with a pocket torch from the top of the hill over the harbour last night. She knew what she was talking about. With her own eyes she had seen the police taking him away, and he would probably be shot at dawn. (It transpired later that Mr V. had gone for a stroll with hi* wife’s nephew, who is in the police force.) But the hunt was un. the spy stories set into circulation. For days I heard of mysterious arrests, of motor cars without- lights seen at midnight, of strange craft slipping out of unfrequented west coast harbours. Sometimes these wore Germans, occasionally they were Japanese (a detail like

Written, by MARY SCOTT, for the * Evening Star*

Japan’s neutrality was neither here nor there), but most often, and most popularly, they .were Russians. (What is it about the Russian that makes him so delightful a subject for mystery? One of the most successful tales of the late war concerned, you will remember, train-loads of Russians.) These spies had one quality in common—one and all dissolved into thinnest mist when examined in the cool light of sanity. It was all very silly and tiresome, but one could have borne it if it had not become cruel. Two days later Mr V.’s small daughter returned weeping from school because the other children hod told her that her father was a spy and would 'go to prison, and thence to the firing squad. I was still fuming over this when an acquaintance 'rang mo up and told me that it would do me no good to allow my daughter to learn music from a teacher with a German name; “besides, it’s well known that his grandfather actually lived in Germany ”! On Thursday I went to a tea party, where I was privileged to hear a great deal of inside information. At one table there were three ladies who are inveterate rivals; to-day their battles centred round defence activities. If A. had a cousin in Parliament, B. had a brother-in-law very much “in the know,” and C. an uncle in the Defence Department.' Consequently they were all authorities, and great was the competition between them. A. knew “ for certain ” that we were all to have ration cards next day; B. told us that the hills behind Wellington were bristling with anti-aircraft guns; and C. gave us the exact route arid destination of the Expeditionary Force. They had a splendid time, terrifying the more credulous of their audience, and one little woman confided to me that she was hurrying home to listen to the Daventry broadcast—“ and it will be quite soothing by comparison ” ! As I ate my elaborate afternoon tea, those words from the Proverbs recurred to my mind. “ Better a dry morsel and quietness therewith.” Yes, far, far better. Then, again, there were those wise words of advice that St. Paul tendered to the Thessalonians, “ That ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your hands.” This, I think, is advice that we can all follow. We cab do our own business, wo can be quiet—and wo can shun rumour, like the evil pestilence that it is.