No Pause and No Gloating

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 221, 17 September 1943, Page 5

No Pause and No Gloating

INCE there was no longer a danger that any victory but the last would turn our heads, it was safe last week to ring the bells and sound the sirens. Now we renew our determination to push on to the end. The battle rolls on. Every breathing space for the enemy, the only enemy now remaining in Europe, means death and disablement for an increased number of our men, a rise in the volume of human anguish on both sides, an addition to the appalling material losses, and a_ longer journey through the blood and sweat and tears. Therefore, no breathing space could be given last week, and none has been given since. Assault convoys were moving up to attack the Germans while the ink was drying on Italy’s acceptance of defeat. For that is war -the speediest, most violent, most ruthless annihilation of resistance to encourage or save the others. And because that is what war always means, there was no gloating over the enemy who had fallen. Bell-ringing in London, Washington, or Wellington means, we know, bell-tolling in Naples and Rome. As long as we are civilised we remember that, and draw a line between: rejoicing and jeering. In any case, we have far too many reasons for restraint on our own side. While the collapse of Italy is a victory in which New Zealand is especially interestedsince there was no battle from the first to the last on the African side of the Mediterranean in which New Zealand did not take partthere was no battle in which New Zealanders did not die from Alamein to Tunis. They lie all the way-as far as from the Bluff to North Cape and back again; and victory can never cost less than that. When it does not come at all, when a whole nation finds itself deceived and betrayed and reduced to asking its adversary for terms, decency forbids cheap sneers.