Year of Destiny
ESTINY has such a bad D time in the newspapers, and in the mouths of preachers, politicians, rotarians, and speech-makers generally, that we should hesitate to discuss it without a special excuse. Our excuse is Field-Marshal Smuts, who declared last week in Pretoria that 1944, unless we make some incalculable blunder, will be "a year of destiny and of decisions that will affect the world for generations to come." It is true that others (including the Fuehrer) have opened éheir mouths wider than this; but Field-Marshal Smuts is a realist. He allows something for stupidity, and something for the unforeseen, but can still say, because he can still see, that the nature and destiny of European man will be settled within the next few months. There is certainly a very special sense in which history is being made as we write. It is difficult to follow the Russian offensive without feeling that Marshal Vatutin is not merely driving the Germans out of Russia, but driving them right out of Europe so far as control is concerned. He is making it clear that. if there" is a single ruling power in Europe during the next fifty years it will give orders from Moscow and not from Berlin. In that region destiny has overtaken the world already. Central and Eastern Europe, Western and Northern Asia, ate passing under the shadow of the U.S.S.R. No one can believe anything else-no one who tries to see the centuries whole and history in perspective. It was in fact something like this that Field-Marshal Smuts had in mind when he said some time ago in London that the war would end .with the five great Powers of Europe reduced to two. It is a bleak prospect for the smaller and weaker countries wherever they are, but not so bleak as it would be if the great Powers were still allowing the small Powers to hope that they will somehow or other recover full liberty of action. They will-when the great Powers somehow or other discover how to police the world without war.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 239, 21 January 1944, Page 3
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349Year of Destiny New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 239, 21 January 1944, Page 3
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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