LONG STRUGGLE FOR UNITED NATIONS

Southland Times, Issue 24872, 12 October 1942, Page 4

LONG STRUGGLE FOR UNITED NATIONS

GREAT ISSUES AT STAKE (P.A.) WELLINGTON, October 11. A recent visitor to New Zealand was Colonel Melvin Maas, of the United States Marine Corps, who represents Minnesota in the United States Congress. His presence in this country was not made known at the time, but it can now be revealed. Colonel Maas was on a special mission to the Pacific. He spent a few hours in Wellington and was entertained by the acting Prime Minister (the Hon. D. G. Sullivan) at a small reception in the Cabinet room at Parliament Buildings. Colonel Maas served for nearly two years in the aviation branch of the Marine Corps in the last war, attaining the rank of captain. A Republican in Politics, Colonel Maas is second to the chairman on the House Naval Affairs Committee. In extending a welcome to New Zealand to Colonel Maas, Mr Sullivan said his association with the Marine Corps was of intense interest to us in New Zealand because of the presence here of members of the American armed forces. They were most popular with our people, who had been glad to have them in their homes. “We have been proud to be associated with them,” he said. WORLD UPHEAVAL Colonel Maas said he was on his way back from Milne Bay and Port Moresby. This was not a war, he said, but the greatest upheaval in history. It was a world revolution. Only one side was going to win. We were either going to win this war and come out of it, perhaps with nothting but our liberty, which was not too big a price to pay if we preserved that, or we would be defeated and be submerged for 1000 years. If we lost this war we had lost for ever, and if we won we must win everything that went with. it. There would be no peace conference this time at which there would be bargaining as there was after the last war. One side would win and simply tell the other side what it was to do. Colonel Maas predicted that the war would be a long one and said there were many blacker days ahead than we had yet seen. “But when on our hands and knees we crawl back up the Pacific and reduce Japan to an island of naked savages, which they should be, and forever purge Germany of its militarist element, and have twisted Italy back into some semblance of respectability, then the decent nations must unite in some form or other of military and economic unity and forever more be united. "There is a long, bitter and bloody struggle ahead,” said Colonel Maas, who remarked that he was glad New Zealand had permitted her troops to remain at the front. “The defence of Australia is the jungle fighting in New Guinea. The defence of New Zealand is in the Solomons and New Caledonia, not in the local fighting.” In conclusion, Colonel Maas emphasized tire need for unity among the United Nations. Every ounce of our energy, every drop of our blood, he said, was required to defeat Germany and Japan and united the Allies were going to defeat them.