CROWDED WEEKS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 206, 30 August 1940, Page 9

CROWDED WEEKS.

N.Z.E.F. ENS BRITAIN.

DEMOCRACY AT ITS BEST. (From ib«- official War Correspondent a7i2c-h«3 to the N.Z. Force* ic Britain.) ALDERSHOT, Ju'iy 15. Four week* this afternoon since we dropped anchor in Home waters. Four weeks of high summer, rather too dry for the countryside and for urban water supplies—unseasonably dry. with August ahead. Yet four aiore perfect weeks it would be hard to find had the object of our coming here been to impress t» with the beauty of England, to fill our hearts with love for her. to enlist us anew in her defence. Four of the most crowded weeks in history thrust nj-on us at the end of a long, tedious voyage that until its last day was notable*chiefly for the bad news which marked our halt*.

Come what may, come when it may. Britain will be alive; stung to glorious, righteous, irresistible anger by the threat to her shores. As this crisis ' presses upon them, the English people are magnificent; the Scots ajjd tne ' Welsh in their different way* equally so. We were told when we "landed by ! overtalkative busybodies and uniutend- I ing fifth columnist* that ?he people at : Home did not reali*e they were at war. !: (What. then, we thought, of the people in New Zealand!) "Hot Losing Their Heads." We know now that, whatever the onetime truth of that accusation, it is true no longer. People here are not losing their head*. They are not giving up their civil work and standing idly around waiting for war. One may pass along the busy street of a county town, and. except for the men and girte in uniform, see little to indicate the abnormal. Factories are humming. field* are busy, shipyards are noisier than ever before. Work; striving; effort everywhere. But all of it directed to one end, the national end. No dictatorship here, but an astounding demonstration of voluntary co-opera-tion and willingness to take order* from an elected authority. Democracy under test, if you like; certainly democracy !at its best- * ; The children are coming home from ! school, clattering down the road past camp, each with his little gas mask over his shoulder. A few of the older girls, ae is the way with girls, seeni to be taunting that little fair-headed chap of seven or thereabout*. 'Tin not afraid of blinking Hitler." he pipes up. "even if he does tend his bombers," The papers record the eame sentiment differently expressed by a child of Mayfair. a "seavacuee," upon his arrival in" New York. Asked if the British would win, he replied. "I most assuredly believe they will." Capture of Naris. A woman walks out. of her kitchen to "'arrest" an armed Xazi airman who towers almost a foot above her. A workman i* placidly painting an inn ! door when the landlord calls. "Come, let'e get those Jerries." They jump a hedge aud race across to capture the crew of an aeroplane that has been shot down. True, these are only the outposts of war. But the response they have evoked from the ordinary people of Britain leaves no doubt how the great majority will face the terrors to come. And when they stand-to in defence of their soil that has known no alien tread for nigh on»JKK) years, our little band of New Zealanders will etand and march with them. Men to most of i whom this land was only a dream one month ago, yet men who are at home in it already, because it ha* awakened in them prid« of ancestry, shown them the sources of human liberty, and wrapped the green tendril* of its beauty about their hearts. Sergeants are not given to sentimentality, especially sergeants who wear three medal* from the last war. Which makes this comment from one of them the more valuable: "I was in Egypt, on Gallipoli—l lost my best cobber there— and in France. I'd go again if we were needed. Bat I never liked the "Gyppos"; I hated Gallipoli; and I froze in France. If I have to fight for this country, 111 tight, because I mean it. And won't Fritz r know it!"