ON THE BUCKLE STREET FRONT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 13, 22 September 1939, Page 38

ON THE BUCKLE STREET FRONT

War Psychology in Wellington

T was a windy day in Wellington when New Zealand's first recruiting for service "at home or overseas" started a story which came back in quick time from the appreciative BBC Empire News Service. And the north-west wind blew everyone in the direction of Buckle Street, where the capital city’s local defence headquarters hid behind murky barrack fronts in the shadow of Wellington’s magnificent war memorial. The Buckle Street front was busynot quite as busy as Auckland’s Rutland Street, but busier than any other part of New Zealand, In one day Wellington and Auckland each registered a total of men almost equal to the whole of the recruiting in the South Island. The reason would not be entirely a matter of population. Temperamental differences in the psychology of the two islands would be one explanation, if it were not for

Wellington’s: joke, almost serious, that the wind would have no hats to steal, hair to tousle, or skirts to rustle, if all the South Islanders packed up and went home. Wellington is supposed to be full of " foreigners," who bring their habits and thoughts with them. War: has come perhaps a little more excitingly close to the North Island cities. Christchurch has had no flying-boat marvels to make isolation seem less safe, no cruisers in her harbour. Dunedin has not seen so many. uniforms as Wellington; so many fixed bayonets, guns ready mounted, guards ready posted. Although Wellington has been outwardly calin the capital is alive with military activity. Precautions taken everywhere in New Zealand seem here to be intensified, with so many more nerve centres to be watched. With it all, there have been few outward signs of heightened interest. People in the streets may have walked with more anxious step, or darted about the narrow pavements with eyes anxious not only about the traffic; a traffic officer is stationed outside a newspaper notice

board at rush hours, for the crowd pushes out across the road; there is stricter surveillance of visitors to Government Departments; more paintbedaubed lorries move around from dawn to dark; yet there are no scenes of public excitement as there were in 1914. Wellington cannot, however, avoid being more aware of the changed conditions than the other centres. Perhaps that was why 1,157 young men crowded into the Barracks last week; and trickled through in batches on each of the succeeding days, undergoing medical examination, taking the oath, getting used to the grinding of the cogs as the military machine speeded up to absorb them, They were a surprisingly representative lot, There was no hope of dissecting them into a category which would say: * This class of young man wants to go to war; that one does not." Young corporals clicked heels in impartial demonstrations before concerned clerks as well as nonchalant labourers. Earnest young men in neat suits surveyed the barracks’ bustle with looks as blank as the gaze of the "chaps" in careless flannels, chewing gum. Everybody was quite serious. Biggest topic of conversation during the waiting hours was " Where are we going?" They did not know but determination must have overcome bewilderment or it would have taken more than seven or eight hours to fill the quota.