Courage

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 331, 26 October 1945, Page 5

Courage

T takes a good deal to rob Mr. Nash of words, but his vocabulary failed him when he had to tell eleven holders of the Victoria Crdss what New Zealand felt towards them. He confessed at once that the task was beyond him. It was beyond anybody to express in words what these men had expressed in action, he said, and he wisely refused to try. Their deeds were on record, and instead of attempting to say what’ New Zealand owed them he asked them to believe that we were both too proud and too humble for words and could only thank them formally. It was one of the most eloquent speeches he has ever made, and if we could follow his example without cheapening it by repetition we might leave the rest of this column blank. We feel just

as heipless as he did, just as conscious of the futility of spelling courage in half a dozen different ways; and just as deliberately we shall not descend to that. But white spaces on a page are white spaces and nothing else. If they suggest anything at all,it is the censor or the clumsy apprentice, whereas the blanks in a speech may be deeply moving. In Mr. Nash’s case they Were moving because they. were nécessary-- because it was not possible to translate life into platform sounds and signs. In the case of Captain Upham and his companions, they were moving for a. different reason-because words are not their weapons, and they were not able without a desperate struggle to dredge up the thoughts they wanted us to carry away: that they were not so much heroes as survivors; representatives rather than individuals; present because others could not be present to share the glory their deaths had made possible. Let us not forget that only one of this war’s seven V.C. men came through unharmed -that three were killed and three grievously wounded.