The Rattle, Too

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 250, 6 April 1944, Page 3

The Rattle, Too

HERE were reminders in some of the discussions in Parliament last week that politics and war observe the same principles. There was another in the House of Commons storm over the equality of the sexes. But the most dramatic reminder was given by Mr. Churchill himself when he pointed out that although a Government "formed in the hour of disaster" had introduced the "most important educational scheme that has ever been attempted," a "very far-reaching policy of national health service," and made both emergency and long-term plans for housing and reconstruction, that although it had done all this without relaxation of the war effort or any party strife, done it while bringing the British Isles and the British Commonwealth "out of the jaws of death" and "back from the mouth of Hell," its reward had been silence or carping criticism. Put in that way, as he was fully entitled to put it, it would seem that ingratitude could hardly go further. It was as if the mother of a child, whom a fireman had brought at mortal risk out of a burning building, had screamed, "But where is his rattle?" Mr. Churchill is the greatest political fireman Britain has seen in centuries-perhaps in all her history. But he is also, and at all times, a man of war, and he knows that war has very little time for gratitude. So he did not complain. He merely drew attention to the facts, which are always and everywhere the same. For every great leader who has ended his life in the sunshine, two have died lonely and cold. Or to put it another way, there is no past in politics and in war; only a future. We are not often big enough, wise enough, or generous enough to say to any leader or to any Government: "Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart, for God now accepteth thy works." Nations have occasionally said that. Far more often they have said, "Get out; we want the rattle as well as the baby-and no scorches on the shawl!"