Idea For a Living War Memorial

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 352, 22 March 1946, Page 8

Idea For a Living War Memorial

(Written for

The Listener

a distinguished United States physicist prominent in the development of the atomic bomb, recently told the Senate Committee on Control of Atomic Energy that forty million Americans might be wiped out in a single bomb attack at the start of another war. Dr. Irving Langmuir, Nobel Prize Physicist, said "the only defence against the atomic bomb once it is dropped is not to be in that place." D R. J. R. OPPENHEIMER, Translating these startling statements into New Zealand terms it means simply this-that a single light carrier could stand off New Zealand and by means of atomic bombs wipe out Auckland, Wellington; Christchurch, and Dunedin in the course of half-a-dozen hours. Gone are the days of building huge bases, of the marshalling of millions of men, of the manufacture of jeeps by the thousand, landing craft, tanks and so forth. In one epochal stroke all are rendered as obsolete as the armoured knight of the Crusades. Nor can we any longer shelter ourselves behind- the belief that, as we hold the secrets of the bomb and the other fellow does not, we have nothing to fear. From all of which it seems that we must as a matter of life and death begin thinking in world terms. No longer can we afford the luxury of leaving diplomacy to the great, or the near-great. No longer can we afford to have even our good friends referring to New Zealanders as "a complacent lot." The might of the British Navy, on which this country has relied since its earliest days, no longer avails us. a * * HAT are we to do about it? We shall take our part in current efforts to place the bomb under some form of international control-that goes without saying. What else? After the hardship and the bitter grief of the past six years would it not be a good thing to feel that we must in all things be abreast of the leaders of world thought in whatever field? As fighters, by common consent, we have few peers. In politics and in the arts we have yet to make our presence felt. A fertile soil and an easy climate has bred, it seems, a race of likable, easy-going Britons who are content to leave anything that looks awkward to anyone who is prepared to do the worrying. So we have become complacent. The atomic bomb apart, then, we dare not settle back into the old grooves. Perhaps it might be as well if the notion of training for war were carried back into these present days of uneasy peace. Why not train for peace? One of the last official acts of the Churchill Coalition Government was to decide that the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA), with a new name and wider opportunities, should be continued into peacetime. The new body is known as the Arts Council of Great Britain. It is presided over by Lord Keynes, the eminent economist. In the words of Lord Keynes the purpose of the Arts Council

is "to create an environment to breed a spirit, to cultivate an opinion, to offer a stimulus to such purpose that the artist and the public can each sustain and live on the other in that union which has occasionally existed in the past at great ages of a communal civilised life." "CEMA came into existence in the early days of the war, "when all sources of comfort to our spirits were at a low

ebb." Originally it was sustained by grant from the Pilgrim Trust. It was the task of CEMA to carry music, drama, and pictures to places which otherwise would have been cut off from all contact with the masterpieces of happier days: to air-raid ‘shelters, wartime hostels, factories, mining villages. ENSA was charged with the entertainment of the Services; the British Council kept contact with other countries overseas; the duty of CEMA was to maintain the opportunities of artistic performance for the . hard-pressed and often exiled civilians. The time soon came when CEMA, started by private aid, was sponsored by the Board of Education and entirely supported by a Treasury Grant. "Henceforth," continues Lord Keynes, "we are to be a permaneiut body, independent in constitution, free from red tape, but financed by the Treasury and ultimately responsible to Parlia-Mepiti-05" "Strange Patronage" I do not believe it is yet recognised what an important thing has happened. Strange patronage of the arts has crept in. It has happened in a very English, informal, unostentatious way. A semiindependent body is provided with modest funds to stimulate, comfort, and support any societies or bodies brought together on private or local initiative which are striving with serious purpose and a reasonable prospect of success to present for public enjoyment the arts of drama, music, and painting. The public exchequer has recognised the (Continued on next page)

support and encouragement of the civilising arts of life as a part of its duty. Australia has already made a beginning of CEMA activities. We, in New Zealand, are groping towards these same civilising arts with lunch-hour chamber music concerts, and the activities of ‘Repertory organisations, Pictorial Art, and Choral and Musical Societies. Miss Dorothy Helmrich, recently under engagement with the NBS, was largely responsible for initiating CEMA in Néew South Wales. Many thousands of our young men and hundreds of our young women have served in the United Kingdom, Italy and the Middle East. They have enjoyed opportunities of hearing Grand Opera in the great Italian theatres; they have seen many of the world’s finest paintings and have had unusual chances of seeing British drama at its best. Will this newly-found appreciation of the arts be allowed to perish through sheer inanition now these men and women are returning to New Zealand? Could Serve Dual Purpose The Prime Minister, in a statement on War Memorials, made in November last, referred to the preference which he considered to be in the minds of the people in the case of World War II. for "Living" War Memorials. He mentioned Sports Centres and Community Centres as examples of probable War Memorials. Surely there is no more appropriate form of war memorial for New Zealand than the founding and the perpetual maintenance of an Arts Council of New Zealand. Its aims would be similar in all

respects to that of the Council of Great Britain -- to bring the arts to the people. It should not be left to the initiative of any Government to set in motion the machinery for setting up such a Council. It should spring from’ the people themselves. If Governments intervene there will always be the suspicion of political bias. It should be noted that though the Arts Council of Great Britain is sustained by Treasury grant, the Government of the day has no direct voice in the conduct of its affairs. To quote Lord Keynes again, " .. + but we do not intend to socialise this side of social endeavour. Whatever views may be held about socialising industry, everyone, I fancy, recognises that the work of the artist in all its aspects is, of its nature, individual and free, undisciplined, unregimented, uncontrolled. The artist walks where the breath of the spirit blows him. He cannot be told his direction; he does not know it himself. But he leads the rest of us into fresh pastures aad teaches us to love and to enjoy what we often begin by rejecting, enlarging our sensibility and purifying our instincts. . . . New work .will spring up in unexpected quarters and in unforeseen shapes when there is a universal opportunity for contact with traditional and contemporary arts in their noblest forms." Here is the opportunity then, to serve a double purpose. In bringing the arts to the people the Council would be translating into positive action the thoughts which inspired those who died.

G.H.A.

S.