A MUCH-NEEDED EXAMPLE

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 195, 14 May 1940, Page 6

A MUCH-NEEDED EXAMPLE

Signs are not lacking that the latest and greatest demonstration of Nazism’s menace to civilization is banishing public complacency in this country. Men and women are beginning to realize that national service means the service of all —soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians. Unless a united effort be forthcoming New Zealand will not be girding herself as the occasion demands; unless that united effort be fully and efficiently utilized the Government will be failing in its clear and urgent duty. An example of the new, much-needed spirit has been provided in Auckland, where the entire staff of a large business firm is forming itself into a unit “available for present and emergency war work . . . consistent with the efficient conduct of the business in which they are concerned.” Each member of the staff is prepared to devote a substantial portion of his or her spare time, and the firm itself is making office facilities available. The reasons given for the making of so commendable a gesture are significant. “One aspect they (the staff) are most concerned about,” remarks a statement, “is the dreadful and obvious state of individual and collective apathy in which New Zea•land appears to be wrapped at present.” These are strong words, but who can say they are not justified? Since war broke out it has been plain that a large number of people are content to be onlookers. They are willing to “stand at the kerb” while volunteers march, or serve the marchers. The end of the period of European stalemate is to be welcomed with relief, if only because it strikes a blow at such apathy.

Now that the new spirit of service is being manifest, it becomes the task of those in authority to ensure that practical encouragement is given. Nothing is so dampening to volunteer effort as inactivity. A great deal of important national work awaits performance and much of it is of a kind which clerical staffs (assuming that the Auckland example be emulated elsewhere) could handle adequately. There is, for example, the compilation of a National Register, already over-long delayed. There is the mass of routine work in connexion with patriotic appeals, national publicity and the like, much of which might be “farmed out” with great advantage to efficient private groups of volunteers. The organization of so valuable a source of effort should not be haphazard or half-hearted. It should be placed in the hands of a responsible individual or committee with imagination enough to see the possibilities of controlled, expert volunteer effort and energy enough to apply that effort without chatter, petty bickering, and delay.