Is It I?
HE most solemn supper in history was eaten in suspicion and sorrow. Thousands of books have been written, thousands more will be written, denouncing, excusing, or explaining Judas, but the simple story that most people accept will outlive our civilisation. Of the twelve disciples one was a traitor, and yet it bewilders and alarms us if one person in twelve thousand is a traitor in the present war. Instead of being alarmed we should face the fact that weeds grow in every crop. If it were not so we would not be at war. We are fighting the crookedness, the greed, the vanity, the cruelty of the human race, and some of it must be on our own side. No war in history was ever a clear struggle of good against evil so far as the individual is concerned. There must be cowards, there are always weaklings, in every considerable group of individuals there will be scoundrels on the prowl for gain. There must in addition be perverts and lunatics-minds with a twist, eyes that see white where others see black, hate-deafened ears, and tongues dropping poison. It is not a new experience that men going forward to battle should be treacherously attacked from the rear. What is new is the fact that attack is twenty times easier and a hundred times more deadly. Traitors in Plymouth could not sink Nelson when he was three days out from the Hoe. But treachery to-day can sink a ship on the other side of the world. Although we must not assume that treachery sank the Rangitane it is a fact that treachery could have done so a day, a week, or even a month after she cleared New Zealand. Judas is now a master of science. He can bear false witness to a million people on the same day. He can block harbours, destroy bridges, blow up buildings that he has never even seen. And because that is one of the hazards of war we must face it calmly instead of getting hysterial about it. While the authorities are dredging the official channels of communication the task for the rest of us is to ask how far our own carelessness has given treachery its chance,
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 85, 7 February 1941, Page 4
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376Is It I? New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 85, 7 February 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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