The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 1939. OUR OWN DEFENCES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 86, 13 April 1939, Page 10

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 1939. OUR OWN DEFENCES.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that reeds resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that toe can do.

The conference Avhich is to open in

Wellington to-morrow will consider Pacific

questions of common concern to New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom,

with special reference to defence. No comparable conference has been held before, and as this one will meet when the international sky is clouded and threatening,

its discussions are certain to take account o£ short-term as well as long-term factors. It will be, except on the New Zealand side, mainly a conference of experts, whose conclusions will not commit the Governments they represent, but it may be expected that at the end the public will be informed in brood terms of the nature of the discussions and conclusions. It is important, and to no country more than to New that the public should be so informed. It is safe to say that for every hundred people who study, or at least endeavour to follow comprehendingly, the course of events in Europe, only one or two have more than a smattering of knowledge of events in the Pacific. Yet we live in the Pacific, and though

through historical circumstances we look towards Europe, and follow with anxious interest the grouping of Powers there, our

interests as a Dominion and as a unit in the British Commonwealth demand now with increasing insistence that we shall do more for our own defences, and do everything in full co-operation with Australia as well as with the United Kingdom. Of all this there is no doubt the Government is well aware — the holding of the conference in Wellington is the best evidence of that—but it is vitally important that the people should also know it, so that they will support

whatever is proposed,

The present state of our defences has been surveyed in a series of articles in the "Auckland Star," and the general conclusion reached is that whatever else is done our territorial forces must be greatly strengthened. What stands in the way of that strengthening? Principally it is public apathy, arising from the notion that as all we hear of war, and fears of war, comes to

us from a great distance, the defence question in New Zealand is one of academic importance. This notion is supported, for the unthinking, by memories of the last wa*, when the only fear we knew was the fear, never realised, of an enemy raid. That the fear was never realised was due first to the world-embracing predominance of the Royal Navy, secondly to the fact that Japan then was Britain's ally, and thirdly to the presence in the Pacific of naval forces which included the battle cruiser Australia. Not one. of these favourable factors exists now as it did in 1914. When this is ftilly realised, as it is in Australia, it is not too much to hope that the recruiting for the territorial force will cease to cau-e :;ravL* concern. When young New Zealanders really understand the need they will respond. In the meantime the appeal made by the Mayor, Sir Ernest Davis, for a thousand volunteers in Auckland —where, as the " Star " has shown, the need is humiliatingly great—is to be welcomed and endorsed; but this is, above all others, a national question, concerning which the country should be informed and guided and inspired by the Prime Minister first.