DEFENCE CALL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 December 1941, Page 6

DEFENCE CALL

MUST TAKE PRECEDENCE OVER INDUSTRY ATTITUDE OF EMPLOYERS. GOVERNMENT BOUND TO ACT. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Although employers are concerned about the effect general mobilisation will have on them, the general opinion expressed is that the war, having drawn appreciably nearer to New Zealand, the Government would be to blame if it did not take every step within its powers to meet the emergency. “If general mobilisation is necessary, then we must bow to the inevitable,” said one employer. . “The country is quite right to be prepared for the worst and even if that preparation means an almost total dislocation of normal industry, surely that is better than allowing the country to fall into enemy hands. What must be determined at once and without equivocation is what constitutes an essential industry, was one statement made, and a similar opinion was expressed in several other quarters.

“I and my partner next week, aided by the office boy, will have to carry on between us as best we can, I suppose,” remarked a warehouse manager, who foresaw all the rest of the staff being notified, but he was quite cheerful about it. “You can’t have business as usual when the enemy is knocking at your back door,” he said. “If the enemy gets in, there won’t be any business at all.”