Everybody Needs A Holiday

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 303, 23 December 1939, Page 6 (Supplement)

Everybody Needs A Holiday

SURF and sun upon the sand, placid lakes that mirror forest slopes and mighty mountain peaks, long roads that wind across the summer-smiling face of a green land into the haze of a hundred miles Holiday time has reached New Zealand! For three generations our pioneers laboured to carve the land we know from its rich primeval heritage. We had war and we had peace—we profited, it has been said, from both. And in the last generation— in the last 10 or 15 years, in fact—we have learned to play. Good roads and better cars to carry us over them have come to New Zealand, .and we have realised at long last the value of our country as a pla°ce of recreation. The Great Depression retarded this movement for five years. Then we had four years of increasing prosperity. Now comes tho spectre of war—as yet unrealised by most New Zealanders. Sir John Simon's warning to Englishmen of "fearful sacrifices" to come will quite possibly apply to our Dominion next year or the following year.

By--Ernest Bysse

So pause, you holiday-makers! Put dcwn that ice cream cone and that glass of beer, and think for ten short minutes of the world that is and is to be. You see a young nation relaxing in its pleasant and well-deserved idleness. Its' people are doing nothing well, and that is the perfect tonic against tho rigours of daily living. They must come back in a few days or weeks to face these rigours once more—and they will be harder to face. Every expert and amateur .strategist alike predicts the "big show" for next March or April; with it will come the great test for the Empire. New Zealand will feel its share of the burden weigh heavily —but now is not the time to feel worried about it. We must help by going on our- intended holidays and getting the maximum out of

them, so that we can return to life's routine and spread something of the pleasant sunshine we have absorbed from surf-lashed beach and dreamy lakeside. Desperately this country needs a new topic of conversation other than tha war. Not that we can ever forget it completely or ever should, but we have talked it over from every angle on a complete lack of authentic information. We know nothing of what goes on behind the scenes, where moves are decided and countered, yet we cheerfully propound our steadfast convictions that such-and-such will happen or should already be happening. Let us instead, having recognised the, fact that we are fighting a war for the existence of our brand of freedom, leave it at that. We must work to win this war, not talk about it. Summer holidays are everyone's interest and will form a much more profitable form of oral amusement. So store up all those happy incidents in the memory; let them be the subject* of conversation at meal or bridge tables. They will keep us cheerful. This must be the brightest Christmas and holiday season New Zealand has ever known!