Moonlight Sans Roses

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 458, 2 April 1948, Page 9

Moonlight Sans Roses

\ JAR has given moonlight rather a different connotation since the days of tender romance in a moon-flooded garden. Once upon a time moonlight implied midsummer-night’s dreams and roses-totnd-the-balcony, at the very worst it was a "mischief-making moon." But since the war it has come to have a sinister implication which pervades almost every story of war-time experiences written. Moonlight now implies bombers and paratroops, raids and escaping prisoners. Moondrop to .Gascony, the ay of a British girl’s adventures with the Maquis, taken from the book of the same name, has this typical moonlit flavour. There is nothing gentle afd romantic about the moon here. It is either for us or against us, depending on which particular branch cf tactical manoeuvres we happen to be attempting to-night. Perhaps its unclouded fullness gives us the longawaited chance for a, raid: or perhaps, emerging from behind a cloud at the wrong moment, it makes us a splendid target for the Gestapo. There were very human touches in this story which made it in many ways more appealing than a more thrilling account of adventure. So many stories of incredible bravery

and self-sacrifice have come to us out of this war that are too far beyond us for most of us to grasp. It is the little things, the things we know from our own experience, that are most telling in the long run.