AIM FOR THE END OF IT!

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21206, 31 August 1940, Page 18 (Supplement)

AIM FOR THE END OF IT!

Get Over the Jolt of War (By Pamela Frankau) “J DON’T know what to think,” said the woman who has been listening to the news with me. Then she frowned and added, “I know that one often says that phrase without meaning much by it. But I do mean every word of it this time. Since war started, I really have not known what to think. There are so many thoughts that aren’t bearable—or possible—or useful. I dig round my own mind like a dog who has forgotten where he has buried his bone. If ever I had such a thing as a train of thought, then the train’s wrecked and all that’s left of it now is a number of disconnected railway-carriages. And they don’t get one anywhere.” She is an intelligent woman and, at the moment, a very busy woman. But she is suffering from the same restlessness as affects the others, those of us who have not whole-time jobs in this war, those who have no jobs at all, those who have to wait now and make the best of waiting. We are conservative animals. When our world changes, our mental mechanism upsets, and takes time to readjust itself. Even the minor switchbacks in ordinary life put us out of gear. If the servant gives notice, if the new neighbours choose to play the radio after eleven p.m.; if the children catch measles, we feel the jolt and it takes us days to settle down into the new conditions. The jolt of war is only the same emotion on a gigantic scale. And if it sounds foolish to compare so great a tragedy as war with a tiresome household upset, just wait one minute. What is war, anyway ? Something beyond our grasp ? Something as uncontrollable, unhuman as an avalanche sliding down a mountain-side ? No. The Causes of War This war began because one nation tried to pinch another nation’s property. It is as simple as that. One man might do that. Nations are only made up of people. If there were no bad human feelings, there would be no wars. Let me illustrate. You wish that you could slap Mrs Jones because she snubbed you in public. You are feeling precisely the same emotion as is felt by the Government of one country when another country has registered a diplomatic insult. We envy the Smiths for their larger house, their more ample income, their car. We are in tune with the nations who resent the prosperity of the large Empire. The Smiths pity us. in a self-satisfied way. They are in tune with any large Empire that sneers at its smaller neighbour. We look in a distrustful way over the top of our fence at the new people next door. The fence might be a frontier and the new arrivals our potential enemy. Do you see ? That is one of the reasons why we should not now let ourselves fall into the error of trying not to think. Let us think like blazes. And, since it is a little difficult at the moment to focus on any solid fact, let us train our thoughts to aim for the end of it. For the end of the war. Aiming for the end of it means that we can steer our minds through sorrow, doubt and fear to a time when this thing will be over. Guess at the good things that will come after. Remember that “all the bad times in the world have never blown the crocus out, nor quenched the fires of spring.” Dismiss Gloom, Mistrust and Fear And if you doubt that the good things will come quickly, think hard and remember that there are town-bred children living now in the country air for the first time; which may encourage you to believe in other possibilities of good coming out of evil. Then say to yourself, “I intend to come out of this war a bigger, a better and a more useful person than I was when I went into it.” You might add, “Why shquld one nasty little man with a moustache and a raucous voice knock the world down?” Remember that there was another nasty little man with a different kind of moustache, who has had twenty-one years of exile in whjch to reflect upon how he failed to knock the world down. Aim for the end of it in your heart. Kick out the patches of gloom, mistrust and fear in yourself. Do not underrate your own importance. You own what Bunyan called the Kingdom of Mansoul. Out of that kingdom alone the new world must be born. All wars are won at last in the mind, not on the battlefield. If we aim for the end of it day and night, the end will come all the quicker. I know that. And I know also that one of my greatest consolations is the guess that in ten years’ time my now-two-year-old nephew will be asking me, “Who was Hitler?”