Another Year
GOOD soldier, we used to be told at A school, does not look behind. Nor, as a tule, does a good citizen. The things we should have done are, in nine cases out of ten, better forgotten. The things we have done can’t be undone. Even when we have to pay for them it is better not to dwell too ruefully on the cost. But it does happen sometimes, and this is one of the occasions, when a backward glance gives us a new thrust forward. As the Prime Minister reminds us on this page, we are going confidently into 1941 because we know what came to us in 1940 without shaking us. We have, of course, been helped by the blunders and miscalculations of our enemies. If they had not assumed that we were beaten when France fell we might already have been beaten. But they have gained just as much from our blunders as we have gained from theirs. It does not matter much now who made these blunders-Bergen, Trondheim, Dakar, and others-they may even have been inevitable, but they helped the enemy at a time when every mistake echoed round the world against us, shaking the confidence of our friends, and making waverers look the other way. These things happened, and things like them may happen again, but the lesson of them all is the invulnerability of what the Prime Minister calls the "unfaltering spirit." We must not boast. We must not be complacent. We must not shut our eyes. We must not suppose that courage alone will prevail against an adversary who has already conquered a continent. But we may believe and we shall, that all our _ resources, mental, moral, and material, will prevail against him if we use them all and remain unfaltering. If, therefore, we "wonder what the New Year holds," we shall not fear what it holds if we remember Dunkirk, Albania, and North Africa. After all, what does the weakest of us fear half as much as he fears tyranny, slavery, and the blackness of the pit into which surrender would sink us? We shall not surrender-partly because we do not know how, partly because 1940 shouts to the deafest among us that we do not need to,
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 80, 3 January 1941, Page 4
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378Another Year New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 80, 3 January 1941, Page 4
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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