Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, MAY 25, 1940. A FULL=POWERED WAR EFFORT.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 May 1940, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, MAY 25, 1940. A FULL=POWERED WAR EFFORT.

ALL that is best in New Zealand will welcome and applaud the announcement made by the Prime Minister (Mr Biasei) that Parliament is to meet on Thursday next, when “measures will be introduced providing for powers on the lines 01. the Emergency Defence Act passed by the British. Parliament on Wednesday.” That Act, as Mr Fraser observed, requires persons to place themselves, their services and their property at the disposal of the country. In Britain, for the time being, all constitutional liberties are. abrogated. The Government is empowered to make an unlimited call upon the human and material resources of the nation in providing for its defence and tor co-operation' with its Allies in overcoming the perils which have now taken such menacing shape. In following Britain’s example, our own Government is taking the action that an overshadowing emergency demands. Whether this action should have been taken earlier is a question that need hardly now be discussed. Certainly it need not be discussed if the Government shapes its policy henceforth in true conformity with the intention manifested in the Prime Minister’s announcement yesterday and particularly with his explicit statement that:

All forms of property and institutions, as well as every person in the Dominion, would be at the disposal of the country for the prosecution of New Zealand’s war effort to a successful conclusion.

Whether it is intended to take what appears to be the logical next step of forming a National Government, representing all parties and the country as a whole, has yet. to be made known. It may now be assumed, at all events, that the Government has discarded decisively the view taken by the Minister of Finance (Mr Nash) when he said, on Thursday evening:

I give you my assurance that so far as our military effort is concerned, it is imposible for this or any other Government to assist the Mother Country to a greater extent than is already being done.

As part and parcel of the total mobilisation in furtherance of the national war effort to which it is now pledged, the Government logically must abandon the system of voluntary enlistment in favour of a universal and methodical call upon the manhood of the Dominion. This, however, evidently must be only a part of the organisation now to be aimed at —an organisation to the end of lifting all productive and useful service to the highest level of efficiency and to the elimination of nonessentials and of waste. The expansion of our national war effort is a matter for methodical and orderly consideration, but the people of this country will unitedly and whole-heartedly support an intensification of that effort by every means at our command. In view of the terrible emergency created by Nazi Germany’s desperate effort’to force an early decision in the war, the idea that it is impossible for us to do more than we are doing to assist the Mother Country, and incidentally to safeguard our own future, most certainly must be rejected out of hand. Unfortunately there is little that we can do to give Britain any further assistance in her immediate and grim ordeal, but it is so much the more necessary on that account that we should take every measure open to us to expand the scale of our war effort a.s soon as possible. The knowledge that assured assistance is coming is the next best thing to instant aid. It is for the Government, with the total resources of the Dominion at its disposal, as they undoubtedly will be, and obtaining the best and most practical advice that is available, to determine what shall be done. That scope for effective action will appear is not, however, in doubt. One all-important branch of war effort in which opportunities no doubt will appear for accelerated and expanded action is that of our participation in the Empire Air Scheme. It has been said justly that While the scale of this scheme clearly is great enough, the schedule of its development was drafted on assumptions —particularly as to the time available for preparation—which no longer hold good. In light of what valiant Allied airmen are accomplishing today in the European war area, it cannot be doubted that an acceleration of the Empire Air Scheme is one of the most potent contributions that can be made to ultimate victory. Collaboration to that end by the countries of the Empire is likely to be set on foot speedily, and New Zealand assuredly is capable of playing its part in that enterprise and in others.

An acceleration of all forms of military training, both for overseas service and for home defence, may be expected to find a place in the plans now to be shaped by the Government, but in addition there must be a comprehensive stocktaking of national resources so that all forms of useful production and service' may be expanded to the utmost. The shaping of a full-powered war effort demands, too, the cutting out of what is non-essential or may be postponed as well as a maximum concentration of energy on the supremely important aim of winning the war.