Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1941. LOOKING FORWARD AND BACK.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 December 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1941. LOOKING FORWARD AND BACK.

•JTROM ancient days, the opening of the new year has been a time of reviving hope—of the charting of new and hopeful departures in individual and community affairs. For all truehearted men and women the change-over from 1941 to 1942 may retain in full depth that traditional character in spite of our own nation and so many others being involved in a great and devastating war, the end of which is still far enough from being in sight.

War on the scale'and in the conditions in which it has developed today is perhaps the most appalling horror that has been known in the history of mankind. Against all the bloodshed, cruelty, waste, wrecking and destruction that is now going on —against even what is hardest of all to bear, the loss of so many of our own best and bravest —there is to be set, however, a profound awakening of spirit, not only in the nations that are fighting for freedom and justice, but in many others who stand morally with them—an awakening which has given rise to a determination that the life of men and nations shall be lifted to a nobler plane.

For all the opponents of Axis gangsterdom, and not least for our own country and others facing the vast Pacific area which is now aflame -with new war dangers, the opening of another year of necessity is a time of grim resolve. Imperative immediate demands are made upon us as a people in order that we may by every means in our power make our own land secure against attack. Our courage and our resources may alike be put to a searching test in the year that is about to open. There can be and must be no holding back from that test if it comes, but we have at the same time our part and place in the great developing effort that looks to a better ordering of human affairs in every part of the world. We have all of us known easier and vastly more pleasant days than those through which we are now passing, but there never has been a time in which the course we must follow has been marked more clearly. There never has been a time when moral and spiritual power has been ranged more definitely against debased barbarism depending solely on brute force.

We are able to look ahead with firm confidence, as a new year opens, primarily and fundamentally because we are upheld by a faith in which we may well be content to live and to die. The choice between good and evil has never been set forth more plainly than in these days of world catastrophe and the verdict of the vast majority of humanity is not in doubt. Neither, though the forces of evil are still -mobilised in tremendous strength,, is the ultimate outcome in doubt. Foolish as it would be to minimise the magnitude and effect of the initial successes Japan has gained in the Pacific, or to believe that limits can at once be set to these successes, the total outlook in the war is vastly brighter from the standpoint of the free nations than it was a year ago. It has been claimed fairlj that in Russia, in North Africa, in the long grim Battle of the Atlantic and elsewhere, Nazi gangsterdom has been debunked. Tn the Pacific, too, there is to be set against the advantages Japan has meantime gained, and against any additions she may be able to make to them, an overwhelming superiority of resources, material as well as moral, yhich sooner or later must tell its tale.

The year now opening may be one .of the hardest our own nation and others have ever known, but it is one on which we may enter with the conviction, in Mr Churchill’s phrase, that in the end all will be well. A year ago Britain and her Dominions were fighting alone, save for the exiled forces of countries occupied by the enemy. Today she has as allies Russia, the United States and China and though time will be needed to enable the members of this majestic alliance to develop their full striking power it need not be doubted that their united and loyally combined efforts will make 1942 a year of achievement in which the doom of international gangsterdom will be written even more plainly than it is written today.