MEN OR FOOD

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 18, 20 July 1918, Page 4

MEN OR FOOD

NEW ZEALAND & THE WAR

DIVERGENT VIEWS

Sir, —Referring to your article on the above, would you kindly state if the following are true : —

1. That the one thing needful is to win the war.

2. That this war of attrition is to be won by numbers.

3. That America can deliver five men to the front to our one man. 4. That America has the men waiting, the get away being only limited by lack of. shipping.

5. That therefore, given our troopships, America could get 25,000 men to the front to our 5000 in these ships in the same time.

6. That when America limited her numbers for other reasons than shipping, the ships could be transferred back to New Zealand again, where we should then have men to send owing •to not having exhausted the supply, during the period when we were by, our policy losing the Allies four men out of five on our proportion. I think a statement from you of where these facts are wrong would be worth more to the cause than the articles such as "New Zealand's Part," which, only leave the public mystified. - If, however, the above statements are correct, what answer is there?—l am, etc., PUZZLED. 17th July. [Our correspondent's letter is apparently directed at our leading article of Monday last, regardless of the fact that in answer to another correspondent we had dealt.with, the points now raised in an article which, appeared on the following day. If "Puzzled" has not read the second article, we suggest that he should read it now. If he has already done so, it would evidently do him no harm to read it again. In any case, we cannot repeat our argument in .detail. The gist of it was that New Zealand has responsibilities which she cannot honourably delegate to America or any other deputy; that she is pledged to keep her reinforcements up, and that the alternative is to pull out of the war; and that the Imperial authorities, to whom the pledge has been given, may be trusted to appreciate the elements of the transportation problem just as clearly as ourselves on this side of the world. We may urge that the town r dweller who stresses the supreme importance of rural production is in much the same position as the New Zealander who wants the Americans to do his fighting for him.—Ed.]