The War and Us

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 527, 29 July 1949, Page 11

The War and Us

NEARLY four years. have passed since V-J Day, so it is a reasonable time to indulge in a little mental stock-tak-ing. How did the war really affect us? How did our social structure survive the impact of those four years of upheaval? What, in particular, was the effect on the younger people, and the post-war generation? Everyone is vaguely aware that changes have taken place, and in an endeavour to put these feelings into words the Talks Department of the NZBS has invited six authoritative speakers to talk on the question What Did the War Do to Us? The first talk in the series, "Fear," will be broadcast from 2YA at 7.15 p.m. on Friday, August 5. It is by Q. H. Brew, a psychologist at the Education Department, who will deal with the effects of what could be called "a general post-war sense of insecurity and foreboding." The second talk, "IdolBreaking," by H. C. D. Somerset, the well-known educationist and sociologist, will try to answer the question "How much have traditional ideas on morality and work been disturbed?" ‘The third, "Doing Without," by Sylvia Smith, housewife and a former university lecturer, asks whether the habits of economy and austerity induced by wartime shortages have had any lasting influence, A, W. Free, a Wellington lawyer, who gives the fourtli talk, discusses the permanent effects (if any) that the "Arherican invasion" of the war years had on us, and brings in the subject of postwar immigration, The title of his talk is "Cosmopolitans?" "The Cost ih Wealth" is the subject of A. S. M. Hely, regional director of Adult Education in Wellington, and he amswers-the question "We are told we did not pay for the war while it went on. Are we feeling that cost now?" The last talk, "Complacency," by M. H. Holcroft, questions whether we have lost our prewar sense of complacency (assuming we had one), and asks if our interest in other countries, their politics and their peoples, and in world government, has increased. Has there been a resurgence in the arts in post-war New Zealand, and is it connected with these factors?