WAR WITHOUT ROMANCE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 62, Issue 7, 20 October 1941, Page 4

WAR WITHOUT ROMANCE.

One fact the very young generation may not realise when it reads its war news. That is that it has had the good luck, whatever else in the way of bad luck it may have had, to be born and reared at a time when military glory has no meaning except for those who are in madhouses or ought to be there, says the New York “Times.” Even Mr Hitler can’t make his spoon-fed public delight in bloody victories. Prom 1938, when war threatened, down to the last dispatches from Berlin, it lias not been possible even for the dictator and his skilful liars to convince any one that the German people are glad toj have their sons wounded or killed for Hitler’s sake, or wouldn’t be glad of any peace that would leave them enough to eat and keep foreign soldiers out of. their cities. We don’t know much about the inside of Germany, but we do know that much. In Britain, the war has been from the beginning a necessary chore. It has been a hard job done under dangerous conditions and therefore invoking an admirable fortitude and heroism, but not a form of life that any one would willingly choose. The glory has departed. Mussolini had more than two decades, but could stir no hankering for it among the Italian people. Now men fight without romance. Civilians know what the soldier always knew—war’s dirt, disorder and malice. It is in cold blood that the democratic armies face Hitler. They fight not only against him and his regime, but against war itself. And they are a more remorseless enemy than they would be if they fought only for a military victory.