And Now?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 326, 21 September 1945, Page 5

And Now?

IRST, New Zealand is committed as never before to world’ citizenship. Though it was not necessary to sign a document in Tokyo Bay to achieve this status, the signing committed us to it more publicy, and quite irrevocably. It also made’us more consciously a _ Pacific nation. Whether we realise it or not, like it or not, we have to find® our place in a world occupied, for centuries before we had even heard of it, by tens of millions of Orientals. In addition, they are now Westernised Orientals, understanding our science, and rapidly converting it to the same technical uses; as clever as we are, and a good deal more diligent. For they are acquiring Western ways without becoming Western people — learning quicker ways of doing things but remaining under the necessity of doing them without ceasing. The pressure of numbers, which we have never felt and are not for a generation or two likely to feel, forced industry on them ages ago, and enabled them to live comfortably where most New Zealanders and Australians would have starved. Unless we face these facts we are putting an end to one conflict and walking into another. Japan will not again this century -- unless America. goes maudlin and soft---threaten the world with arms. But 80 million Japanese still have to live, and their threat to our economic standards began before the ink was dry on the surrender document. We have to meet that threat by working harder or by living more simply, or by doing both; and neither will be easy for us. We hope of course to make friends with the Japanese some day; with a new kind of Japanese; but we are not their friends now, and, if defeat changes them into a people with whom we are ready to be friendly, they will not have changed in one respect. They will still be restlessly industrious and aggressively intelligent, and if we want to be their victims a second time the surest way to bring that about is to start a domestic war as often as we are asked to forgo some comfort or put forth a little more energy.