NEED OF UNITY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 July 1941, Page 3

NEED OF UNITY

IN CARRYING ON WAR ' TO VICTORY PLEA BY FARMERS’ UNION PRESIDENT. NOT A TIME FOR PARTY WRANGLING. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. “A general election casts its shadow across the land,” the Dominion president of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union (Mr AV. AV. Mulholland) observed in his address at the Dominion Conference of that organisation today. “The parlies are girding up their loins for a battle which looks as if it will be mainly one of ‘you did’ —‘I didn’t’ —vociferously shouted from hundreds of platforms . Surely, there is something more important to be considered now than what somebody said in 1928, or what somebody else replied in 1932. “There is a war on. A war shaking the very foundations of humanity—a war demanding every ounce of united effort that we can put into it, if the earth is not going to be overwhelmed in darkness and bitter misery perhaps for generations to come. It is a time for getting together and doing something about it, not for aimless wrangling. It is a time when we need all the best brains on the one side, with victory their objective, not divided into groups whose main objective is to out-shout the other fellow. We need competence in government. Let us get it by getting together on it—not by blaming the other fellow. We need courageous decisions. Let us get together to make them, and not blackguard the other fellow for not doing it. Let us postpone our party arguments until we have finished the great argument with Hitler and Co. If-we do that, we will have time to settle our smaller differences in the days to come. If we do not do that, the tyrant may settle them for all of us, and we will not even be allowed to growl about it. The time is ripe, and more than ripe, for a real, united national leadership calling us to victory. Lot us have it. “A year of difficulty, of danger, of sacrifice, lies behind—a year of greater difficulty, of greater danger, calling for greater sacrifice lies ahead. In the days that are past, disasters have fallen heavily upon us, but somehow never more than our strength could bear.

Somehow we have been saved—somehow the worst has never happened. Often it has seemed inexplicable that we should still carry on. In those dangers bravely faced—in those disasters miraculously survived —is great hope for the future. The noble qualities of our Christian civilisation cannot be overborne by terror, injustice, and evil. There is something in righteousness that, in itself, rises stronger than brute-force, and, if we be but true to the cause that is ours we shall win through. Perhaps the darkest hour is not yet. Certainly days of trial —of bitter trial —are still ahead. But, like the ever-burning Toe H lamp, there is an inextinguishable flame which lights us on to victory if we are but worthy! of the cause we hold. Our cause is worthy. We will be worthy of our cause. All the traditions of our past unite to spur us on in the cause of human freedom. Now wo join hands across the sea with the great democracy of America —one with us in a great determination to bring freedom triumphant out of these dark days. Victory is before us. On then to victory.”