Each In His Turn

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 67, 4 October 1940, Page 4

Each In His Turn

T is a sobering thought that the appear- | ance of this number coincides with the appearance of a Gazette calling up sixteen thousand of our countrymen for military service. More sobering still is the thought that everybody over forty has seen such things happen before. Twenty-two years is a long stretch for boys and girls, but to those who were meri and women when the last ballot was taken it is almost no time at all, and is certainly not long enough to dim the memories of 1918. It would be unnatural, insensitive, and dangerously uncomprehending to accept such experiences without question. We do question them, and we should. We should even feel bitter about them. But we deserve no pity and we shall experience no mercy if we waste time expressing our bitterness while gangsters gun our homes. Ballots have never been taken in New Zealand to make men fight. They are taken to settle in what order each will fight-a vastly different matter; to free the individual from the burden of a decision he is not always competent to make. We should be bitter against the warmongers who make a decision necessary, but we are poor representatives of our race and age if, since sacrifice is necessary, we do not accept it cheerfully when we know that it is our turn to pay. Conscription cannot, in a self-governing community, send men to war. The community decides on war and conscription settles the method of waging it. That is why there will be no distinction in the army itself between volunteers and men called in by ballot, and why it makes no difference whether the ballot is for home service or for service overseas. Parliament and the people declare for battle. The ballot merely sounds the "Fall in." By the men themselves it will be answered very cheerfully.