THE Pukekohe and Waiuku Times PUBLISHED ON TUESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOONS. FRIDAY, MARCH 9, 1917. NATIONAL EFFICIENCY.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 257, 9 March 1917, Page 2

THE Pukekohe and Waiuku Times PUBLISHED ON TUESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOONS.

FRIDAY, MARCH 9, 1917. NATIONAL EFFICIENCY.

''We nothing extenuate, nor set down auoht in malice."

The factors upon which the future (if the Empire, indeed of civilization itself at pietent depend are two, the military and the economic. Neither of these can help us if the other be neglected, and it is of the utmost importance that every one of us should not only understand this, but lay it so en'irely to heart that it shall supersede in one's thoughts all lesser things. The one consuming desire of the day should be to learn how each can best help the Empire in the present crisis, and, having learned, to perform his share of the common task zealously and untiringly.

Of New Zealand's share in the military task it is unnecessary to speak, for from the very first she realised her duty in that direction, and has done it evor since with unswerving devotiou. It is upon the economic fide that there is the gravest reason to doubt whether there has as yet been the slightest awakening of the imagination of the people of the Dominion and until that imagination be thoroughly aroused neither National Government nor Efficiency Board can hope to accomplish anything worth having. After two and a-half years of war we see the struggle of economic endurance waged by the noncombatants on either side, standing out in clearer and clearer relief. Our armies-can only win if they are afiordod the strenuous and singlehearted support of us who stay at bome. On us as much as on them depends the issue—tho momentous issue of our liberty or enslavement. The German armies are supported by the intensost energies of the wholo nation, reinforcod by tho most careful frugality ; and her undoubtedly groat resources are husbanded to the utmost. And we. Aro we as yet doing anything to meet this groat economic pressure, as powerful, and in the long run as deadly, as the arms of her soldiers ? We ought to be producing more, to be consuming less than ever before, but aro we ? Until tho national conscience is fully stirred and we learn to adjust our wholo economic outlook to the task of winning tho war we shall stand in the gravest danger. If the

Empire can outlast the enemy in money and resources it can and will win ; and it is beyond dispute that we can outlast him if we choose. Shall we not so choose 'i Let no individual think that his or her little help is so small as to be negligible. If the coral insects thought so there would never be a reef.

' This is not a time for patient good-humoured tolerance of the unworthy, the idler, the fritterer of either time or money. It is rather the time for the plainest denunciation and the sternest compulsion of those who can help but will not. Until we realise clearly that the man wLo hews three tons of coal when he might hew live is as greut a traitor to his couutiy as the man who sells military secrets to the enemy, we have not stepped over the threshold of knowledge of what National Efficiency really means. And until we grasp the fact that because much needed agricultural machinery is shut out for want of the shipping-space monopolised by motor-cars, the man who buys an American car is loading the enemy's guns for him, we shall not have taken oven the first step towards learning the secrets of that Economic Endurance which will alone aid our gallant soldiers and sailors to win the war. And unless we steadfastly set ourselves to master and to use those secrets we shall be traitors to them, to ourselves, to our Empire and the World.