Fifth War Christmas

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 235, 24 December 1943, Page 3

Fifth War Christmas

T would be rash to say that Saturday will be the most amazing Christmas New Zealand has ever experienced. Superlatives are always rash. But there can be few among us who do not feel the strangeness of celebrating Christmas in the situation in which the world finds itself this week. It is not merely that our own country is at war. The countries not at war are so few, and relatively so unimportant, that it is not an exaggeration to say that the whole globe is on fire. It is quite likely, as we write these lines, that one New > Zealand division is fighting in the snow of the Apennines and another in the steaming jungle of the tropics. It is beyond question that friends and allies are fighting in those places, and in other places as oddly contrasted-river valleys in Burma, walled cities in China, frozen steppes in Russia; fighting in the sea and in the air; fighting all night and fighting all day; occupying deserts; holding mountain tops; patrolling the Arctic; ferrying men and guns and supplies over the very top of the world in Tibet. Nor is this just a temporary madness-a week or two of lunacy that will end as suddenly as it began. It is a frenzy that has lasted for fifty-one months, and it follows a plan. The war is not sheer madness. It is calculated (and still calculating) evil-an attempt by one half of mankind to conquer and control the other half, and the struggle of the other half to free itself. Freedom is being achieved. It will be completely achieved on one side of the world before Christmas comes again. But to rejoice in the meantime calls for some hardihood. It is possible, it is desirable, but it is certainly not easy-for those even whose faith it is that "in His will is our peace."