FULL AND EFFECTIVE AID

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 113, 14 May 1940, Page 6

FULL AND EFFECTIVE AID

(To the Editors

Sir, —Continually placid Ministers unversed in the technique of war quote figures purporting to buoy up the sinking barge of voluntary effort. These figures are misleading in that they contain among the number who have offered their services voluntarily many returned men who through age or other reasons are debarred from service overseas. Reinforcements for one division of 17,000 men, based on a very low average, the Jowest figure in the last war of 10 per cent, casualty through death, wounds, or sick wastage means 95,000 men every three years to maintain that division in fighting trim. Actually the New Zealand casualties at Passchendaele and at Anzac were 47 per cent, in one day, which meant that 8000 men had. to be handy to fill the ranks or withdrawal or defeat was the alternative as a fighting force or a force effective in action. It takes six months' intensive training to produce a soldier. Faced with these o unchallengeable facts, intensified in a more ruthless type of warfare, authority still complacently pats itself on the back, puts politics first, and talks of the "success" of voluntary enlistment! . '

To one who served throughout the last war and was since resident in Germany—and let us not differentiate between Nazis and Germans, for we are at war with Germany—the attitude of official and civic apathy in New Zealand is as inexplicable as it is indefensible.

One admires the telegram sent to our Prime Minister as reported in your columns from some political group—:unhappily it was tinged- by its political association. One wonders whether,

when Parliament meets, the country's mandate to the Ministry should survive. The apathy and content of responsible Ministers must be challenged by every Digger member of the House forcibly and effectively—party ' considerations forgotten in the nation's hour of peril to its very' .existence. Apart from the moral right of Britain to expect the help promised in men, materials, and effort, full support from the "lion's youngest cub" is lacking.—l am, etc.,

PRO PATRIA.