"A Sma' Request"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 244, 25 February 1944, Page 3

"A Sma' Request"

HEN Burns ploughed up @ mouse he wrote it a tender poem. It was a thief, but it had to live. In any case "a daimen-icker in a thrave" was a small request (a grain of corn now and again from a whole stook),. It was in much the same strain that the meat-ration was announced last week by the Minister of Supply. One chop in three would not hurt us: it might in fact help us, but anyhow it was a small enough sacrifice to make for Britain. And that of course is the truth. It is so obviously the truth, that we shall not see it unle&s we are hit in the eye with it. The difficulty with all our rationing so far in New Zealand has been to give it a suggestion of the heroic. If we could feel heroic over it a chop a day would be easy-almost as easy as six ounces a day of steak. But we can’t feel heroic, We know that it means no hardship at all to reduce our consumption of beef and mutton to two and a-half pounds a week, and would still involve no hardship if we could not add poultry, fish, rabbits, and offals, with ham and bacon now and again. It is a joke as a war sacrifice, and because it is a joke it is going to be difficult to enforce. The Minister knows that, and everyone who has imagination knows it too. Therefore to feel serious about it we have to forget ourselves altogether-look away from New Zealand to Britain, and to the great and increasing hunger as you go east from Britain. Our sacrifice is nothing as a sacrifice, but it is something of great importance as a gift; nothing to us (unless perhaps a reduction in rheumatism), but something like a thousand tons of meat a wéek for others who desperately need it. Even on our reduced scale of consumption we shall have at least twice as much meat as the people of Britain will be able to buy if their present ration is maintained. We must not sink to the depths of selfishness in which that seems natural or tolerable.