BLOOD AND TEARS IF NOT SWEAT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 127, 31 May 1941, Page 8

BLOOD AND TEARS IF NOT SWEAT

"The blood and tears are flowing, but where is the sweat?" asked Mr. S. Blackley in his address to the Hutt County Council, on retiring from its chairmanship. His question related to the statements of two leaders—one made at an early stage of the war by Mr. Churchill on assuming Britain's Prime Ministership, the other made quite recently by the Acting Prime Minister of New Zealand, Mr. Nash. Both these pronouncements will be used in the future to make history, and particularly to make that part of history which deals with (1) the quality of population in a democracy; (2) the quality of democratic patriotism when translated from terms of lip service into terms of actual service; (3) the courage of democratic leaders in giving (or not giving) their peoples a determined lead, and (4) the ability of democratic populations to respond to such a lead when and where given. In fact, the whole reputation of democracy as an enduring and self-re-specting social-political system is wrapped up in this inquiry which the future historian will make, taking as his landmarks such pronouncement? as the Churchill warning and the Nash sequel, wherein Mr. Nash finds that less than 5 per cent, of New Zealand's people realise what is at stake in this devastating war. Mr. Churchill's promise of blood and tears and sweat was a bold experiment in stark realism. In Britain it succeeded. He told them the worst: they accepted it. His blood, sweat, and tears utterance is a brilliant initial application of a principle of realism—of realistic candour — which, unfortunately, has not always been reflected in those equivocal, tendentious, sedative publicity statements which in certain British quarters pass as war-wisdom, but which some people call "pap." So it cannot be said that the spirit of Churchill leadership operates right through the official and semi-official publicity of lesser authorities; nevertheless, the Churchill lead has outshone all these publicity peccadilloes, and it can be said that since Dunkirk Britain has slumbered not; Can the same be said of New Zealand? Mr. Nash, Mr. Blackley, and the conference of Returned Soldier Associations answer No. How, then, shall the sleepers be awakened? And who is to blame for the percentage of somnolence in New Zealand? Obviously, the people themselves are primarily to blame for failing to value sufficiently the freedom they possess. But does our leadership altogether escape culpability for this somnolence? Equally obviously, the answer is No. The 95 per cent, of New Zealand' 6 population who do not realise what is at stake in the present war are led by a Government whose degree of realisation of what total war means is reflected by the spending of many millions on non-war purposes, and by the persistence in not only public works but in other parts of its socialpolitical programme not at all helpful to concentration on war-winning. What is it that is "at stake in the present war"? It is our freedom, including our freedom to legislate for butter before guns. But if Hitler's guns before butter programme succeeds, all our freedom is gone, including butter before guns, including social security, and including all further attempt to increase the social dividend of the unfmancial by overtaxing those who do not benefit. What is at stake in the present war is the whole capacity of the New Zealand Government to attempt a social redistribution. Would it not have been prudence, then, to concentrate Government spending on defence against the totalitarian flood that threatens all? Yet this degree of "realisation of what is at stake" has been far beyond Mr. Nash's Government. Can the people, then, carry the whole and sole blame for the fact that more than a year and a half after the war began, and something like a year after the call for blood, tears, and sweat, Mr. Nash calculates the realising portion of New Zealand's population at under 5 per cent. What is the remedy? Who will wake the sleepers—the sleepers in office, also the other mass of sleepers? The Returned Soldiers' Association calls for a Ministry of Information. But who will inform the Information Ministry, if Mr. Churchill's own personal example i finds such indifferent echoes in the lower channels of ordinary officialdom? That Britain is awake cannot be altogether due to any Information Ministry, whether good or mediocre. It should be remembered that Britain possesses, and New Zealand does not possess: (1) a Churchill; (2) a Churchill realistic warning of what could happen, and a Petain inquest j

in France into what has happened, with appropriate remarks by the Field-Marshal Coroner on the evils of popular play and pleasure—remarks too late for Frenchmen, but useful to their former allies. Thirdly, and not less important, Britain possesses recurrent showers of bombs, which entail sweat just as surely as they entail blood and tears. The question "Who will wake the sleepers?".may be found in the end to be closely related to the ebb and flow of air warfare. But to suggest that democrats can be awakened only by enemy bombs and not by their leaders is a confession that democracy will shrink from making. There is still time for the sleeper* to awake of their own volition, instead of furnishing the future historian with further melancholy evidence of democratic decadence.