By Hand

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 199, 16 April 1943, Page 3

By Hand

you can’t teach a man to write without teaching him to forge. What then do you teach a man if you show him how to print? Most of us can write, but if we were given a ton of paper and told to convert it into a book or a newspaper one in ten thousand might know how to begin. The problem was presented a few weeks ago to the troops in New Caledonia and the result, Kiwi, has now reached us. It would be interesting to know what Mr. Shaw would have said if it had reached him instead. For it is clear that half a dozen men in that small army have now learnt how to print, and if writing has such possibilities, its conversion into print with such primitive aids as an army can carry into the jungle is perhaps, portentous in the good old historical sense. What will happen to these magicians when their task is done? If history inevitably repeated itself they would have to be drowned in their own ink (if they used liquid ink), or beheaded by their own guillotine at the end of the war to protect the rest of us from their cleverness. It is in fact not fantastic to suggest that some such fate awaits all Pacific printers (and journalists) if the war ends the wrong way. So we must see to it that it ends the right way-and Kiwi, it is clear from this first issue, thinks so too. It is building up morale where, without it, life would be a little drab. In the space of four slightly bigger than foolscap pages it summarises the war news, follows the races, tabloids the home front, expounds Pacific football, gives information about the currency, and a very solemn warning about strong drink. Finally the Kiwi of the title block is a real Kiwi, alive, alert, on the prowl, and as the inside pages show, with a beak and eye ready for anything. If the Prime Minister had not said it in advance we should have to say, not merely that "the spirit of attacking difficulties animates ‘all our forces overseas," but that what this force has done by hand would shame many printers equipped with the latest devices in mechanised typography. A to G. B. Shaw