THE NEED OF MAXIMUM UNITY.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 April 1942, Page 2

THE NEED OF MAXIMUM UNITY.

JN this country, as in Australia, the assurance and fact of powerful American aid should quicken and intensify our determination to do everything in our power, not only to defend ourselves against attack, but to support and further offensive action on the greatest practicable scale. There can be nothing else than full agreement with the contention of the American Minister to New Zealand, Brigadier-General Hurley, that in face of the fact of Japanese aggression, it seems futile for us to continue to debate social, political, economic and diplomatic objectives, because all of these objectives will be lost if we lose the war. That the people of New Zealand are still short of the pitch of national unity that the war demands has been made clear in various ways. It was made clear not least pointedly in some observations by the Prime Minister (Mr Fraser) at the Easter conference of the Labour Party-—-observations in which he stated that his personal views on the subject of the formation of a National Government were out of line with the opinion of the Parliamentary Labour Party and with those of his colleagues in. Cabinet, and outlined the procedure that would be followed in the event of a stage being reached at which he felt unable to carry on as Prime Minister of a purely Labour Government. The position as it stands can hardly be called satisfactory but fortunately there is little enough doubt about what the decision of the people of the Dominion would be upon the question of maximum •national unity in furtherance of the war effort.