DEFENCE OF NEW ZEALAND

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22593, 24 December 1938, Page 6

DEFENCE OF NEW ZEALAND

TO TBS ZDXTOB OT TH» PEESS Sir, —In your issue of December 22 you have a letter from E. A. Dennis on “Defence of New Zealand.” It is certain that New Zealanders do not realise the danger of losing the country of which they boast so proudly. There is one necessity—that somehow they should be told the facts in such a way that the most easy-going and obtuse will understand. They must learn that their danger is not that they will be what Germany was after the last Great "War, a nation existing under penalties and disabilities, but that they will cease to be a nation at aIL New Zealanders are hoping to get away with something which is impossible of achievement; to live In ease and plenty, cafe-free although practically unarmed, in a world of ferocious competition and bitter striving. Can New Zealand be “Insulated” from those who oovet her great possibilities? Emphatically not, if she has no other slogan than "a high standard of living." The Scots succeed in every country to which they go—and their watchword has always been “High thinking, and plain living.” Let us in’ this New Year awake to our danger, and learn above all things that we can hold nothing in this life which is of value without sacrifice and endeavour. If our young men spend their leisure in watching (not participating in) sport, if Friday nights are devoted to easy pleasure, and plentiful alcohol, and Saturday morning to bed; if our statesmen receive more than £1,000,000 in duty on beer, and allot less than £2,000,000 to the defence of our lovely land, then it will pass from us to a more virile race. Do the ghosts of the pioneers watching us sorrowfully say to us, their descendants, “Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed; how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?” —Yours, eta, 26752. December 23, 1938.