NOT GOOD ENOUGH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 June 1941, Page 4

NOT GOOD ENOUGH

RESPONSE TO WAR SAVINGS APPEAL BROADCAST BY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEE. MUCH GREATER EFFORT NEEDED. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Announcing last night the opening of a campaign for 250,000 National Savings accounts, the chairman of the National Savings Committee, Mr T. N. Smallwood, drew attention to a recent advertisement in which Hitler is spitting out the words quoted by Rauschning in his book “Hitler Speaks”: "I shall shrink from nothing . . . destroy ... by all and any means. I shall spread terror. Why babble about brutality and be indignant about tortures? The people . . . make them shudderingly submissive.” The speaker asked whether we were prepared to be made “shudderingly submissive”; whether we were prepared to lose our heritage of freedom; whether, if the cause of freedom did not give us the fullest inspiration to count no sacrifice too great, the great sacrificial beacon lit and kept alight by the people of Britain did not fire our hearts and minds and give us the determination to put forth cur best efforts. “I am. chairman of a small and enthusiastic committee, endeavouring to propagate the gospel of thrift in national cause,” said Mr Smallwood. “The response has been good, but not good enough. We endorse the words of our Acting-Prime Minister when he says he is sure that not 5 per cent of the people of New Zealand realise what is at stake' in the present war. The campaign was commenced on October 10, and so far 124,371 National Savings accounts have been opened, | representing less than 10 per cent of i ordinary Savings Bank accounts in the Dominion.” . Mr Smallwood said that, in pursuance of the Government’s policy of adequately supporting our fighting forces, it was asked that every penny that could be reasonably spared should ,be lent for approximately four years. The people of London in seven days subscribed £124,000,000 for War Weapons Week—£24 a head of population; we in seven months had subscribed | £1,500.000 from the same type of saving—£1 a head of population.” In peace time, said Mr Smallwood, one saved with an object—travel, education, marriage, a prospective home, a sense of security and all it implied; while these objectives were worth while, they must be postponed in war. The objectives still remained, but their fulfilment depended on winning the war. The cause required everyone’s savings to buy weapons. It called for no monetary loss, as 3 per cent interest was paid. The National Savings Committee was opening a campaign for 250,000 National Savings accounts. So far there were 124,371 accounts, one for every 13 people. People who had not opened an account were asked to do so immediately and to encourage others to do likewise. They were asked to go on adding to their account' week by week. If they had a lump sum available National Savings bonds could be immediately purchased at any I post office, trustee savings bank or trading bank. A solemn assurance had been given that every penny so sub- 1 scribed would be used solely to defray < the cost of the war to this country. i “Forge the national weapon,” said ] Mr Smallwood. “Hitler says he will 1 make us ‘shudderingly submissive.' j Can he? Not while the blood courses t through our veins, not while we think, dream and act, to emulate our j own kith and kin, the bulwark of our f safety and security—that noble, massed t inspiration of our lime, the peoples ] of the British Isles.” ,