The Bells Ring

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 178, 20 November 1942, Page 3

The Bells Ring

HAT most of us are thinking about this week is not what happened last week, but what is going to happen in the weeks lying just ahead. We are afraid to bask too hopefully in the sun that is now so warmly shining in case the clouds gather and we find ourselves shivering again. Well, the clouds will gather; that is certain. It is certain that the winds will again blow. But it is just as foolish to fear too much as to rejoice and relax too soon. Let us accept the facts for what they are worth: worth now, They are great facts: not the end, we have been warned, or the beginning of the end, but events that have brought the end appreciably nearer. The enemy is still enormously strong. We. are ourselves in many ways still dangerously weak: in ships, for example, in the Atlantic, and in bases and bombers and tanks in the Pacific. But if we were Martians looking on at the struggle with indifferent eyes, and gambling on it, we would be as ready now to put our money on the United Nations as we were twelve months ago to put it on the Axis. Nor would it seem strange to us as we watched that the United Nations had started ringing bells. We would know, if we felt about such things as humans do, that hopes deferred make the heart sick-so sick, if they are deferred long enough, that there is a loss of power to relax and rejoice. So the bruised and baffled people of Britain are rejoicing in order to release their inhibitions. There is not much risk any longer that they will rejoice too much or too foolishly. That is the first point. We have something to feel happy about, and we must not be afraid to rejoice when the very stones are crying ‘out our successes. But we have something to remember on the other side too. We must not forget that when our enemies are thrown out of Africa they are freed from a heavy obligation and a steady drain on their resources by land, sea and air.