By Telephone and Radio

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 273, 15 September 1944, Page 7

By Telephone and Radio

HE difference between next week’s telephone appeal for war funds and those made | previously is the fact that this may be the last. Perhaps we should say could be the last, since the decision depends on our enemies as well as on ourselves. As we write they are clearly enough on the run; but it is impossible to say how long that will last, and what sacrifices still lie ahead if they decide on a lastditch struggle on their own territory. We do know that they are no longer capable of snatching victory from our grasp and delaying the war indefinitely; but the more clearly we see that, the more urgent we must think it to bring the fighting to its earliest possible close. To let it drag on for a single hour longer than it would last if we all did our best to end it is to have blood on our hands whether we see it there or do not. It is like neglecting to replace a plank in a bridge which we know people must cross in the dark: we do not wish to injure them; but pious wishes without the elementary decencies of kindness and helpfulness can leave us whited sepulchres. So we shall "not be told why we should use our telephones and receiving sets .on the evening of the twentythird. We know why; and we know too that three out of four of those who make no response at all will be leaving it to someone else to carry their load for them. It is after all never possible to adjust burdens equitably: the willing always carry the unwilling part of the way however unseemly that may be. It is in fact useless to complain of this or to try to shame the shirker into doing his duty: he is incapable of shame or he would not be in that boat. But we are all capable of self-interest, and although that is the lowest level on which to be fighting a war, the _ simple fact is that what we lend we get back and what we refuse to lend, and are» compelled to surrender in taxation, we lose altogether. If we do not listen for decency’s sake we shall perhaps do so for self-protection.