Four Years

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 220, 10 September 1943, Page 3

Four Years

T would be foolish after four years of war to say that we can look back over the whole period without a moment of shame. We can’t in New Zealand, they can’t in Britain, it would be fatuous to say that they can in New York or Moscow. But it would be more foolish still to say that we dare not look back at all. For the best part of a year now the war has gone well for all the United Nations, and the three years before that were punctuated by events to which our children will turn in gratitude and pride. Let us acknowledge it without humbug or cant, And when we look more particularly at our own humble part in New Zealand, let us not shrink from feeling and saying that posterity will not have to blush for us. We were not ready for war physically or mentally. We did not believe until it happened, and could hardly be blamed for not believing, that our safety could disappear in a night. Yet all unready as we were, disarmed in body

and in mind, we faced about and in 2¥%2 years had half our manpower of military age armed and in uniform. Nearly all the others, and.nearly all those who were over age but still young enough to serve in some capacity, had been enrolled as Home Guards or in the E.P.S., until the story in the end read like this: Navy, Army and Air Force .,,, 189,000 Sent overseas .... ete se 95,000 Home Guard .... Ai ....+124,000 Civil Defence .... soci .... 160,000 Those of course are peak figures, and already are not quite accurate; but they are accurate enough to show that our children will not have to apologise for us if their children ask questions about the four years that ended last week, There is much to be done yet and much to be endured, much to be humble about, and much cause for gratitude to the great nation that protected us last year. But we can at least say that we faced the worst without flinching and prepared to defend ourselves with a thoroughness and speed that history will cettainly commend, 7