BRITISH MORALE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 117, 20 May 1942, Page 6

BRITISH MORALE

MINGLING OF CLASSES

A HEALTHIER DEMOCRACY

(0.C.)

AUCKLAND, This Day

Great hope for a healthier state of social democracy in Britain,as the result of the mingling of persons of all callings and stations in various forms of war service from which no fit individual was exempt was the outstanding view of the internal effects of the current conflict, said Professor A. G. Davis, who has just arrived from Wales to take up the chair-of law at Auckland University College.

"I was an A.R.P. warden.in a Cardiff suburb." said the • professor, "and my ■ post—like thousands of posts throughout the country—was a place where high arid low, rich and pojpr, met on equal terms. My post had a staff of 62 people. Before the war I had known only one of the 62, but before long, under the stress of airraid duty, the whole of us became close friends."

The same applied in the Home Guard and in every other form of wartime activity. There could be great benefit in the breaking down of traditional social barriers. These multitudinous contacts giving rise to greater mutual understanding should be a strong force for democracy, and it was to be hoped that the effects would not die out when peace returned. HEIGHTENED DETERMINATION. "The morale of the British people could not possibly be higher," said Professor Davis. "The heavier the raids, the more determination to see the job through heightened^ I saw no sign whatever of any element of defeatism, and among the highly emotional Welsh people, of whom I naturally saw most, one would have expected to see it first if there had been any. Rationing has meant very real privation, but the more people were deprived of the pleasant things of life the more they declared they did not mind it."

The strictness' and universality of rationing was a principal factor in the excellence of British morale, said Professor Davis. People did not feel sacrifices so much when they knew that all were being treated alike in the scarcity of such things as sugar, butter, and eggs. The equal treatment of duke and dustman was a great moral advantage arising from rationing.