AN INSPIRING SURVEY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 42, 18 August 1942, Page 4

AN INSPIRING SURVEY

The survey of Britain's war effort given yesterday by the High Commissioner for the United Kingdom, Sir Harry Batterbee, should be read, cut out, and preserved for constant reference by every friend of Britain. It is a conclusive answer to Britain's detractors. When Britain faced the imminent threat of invasion, Mr. Winston Churchill rallied the people to the heights of endurance arid heroism," with a call for such an effort that the world would ever after say: "This was their finest hour." But, because of the British capacity for frank self-

criticism, there has since been a tendency for people outside the United Kingdom to underrate the sustained achievement that has followed," to view "the finest hour" as an hour apart. Sir Harry Batterbee's survey shows that the high peak of endeavour attained in 1940 ,was but the beginning, that the nation has gone on from strength to strength, with a power of endurance and a capacity for sacrifice never yet surpassed. The facts presented in the survey cannot be restated in a brief space, but one or two of the more striking may be emphasised. More than half of the national resources are now being turned into means of winning the war, even if feeding, clothing, and housing of the Armed. Forces (really a war purpose) be counted as civilian uses. Not less than 22,000,000 people out of 33,000,000 between the ages of 14 and 65 are in full-time war work. The remaining third includes the women with families to care for and all the workers engaged in providing for civil needs. Hours are not less than 52 a week in in[dustry and 46 in offices. Sixty per cent, of the national income is going into the war. And what of the results? "We have been accustomed to think of German organisation as something super-efficient, unapproachable by unregimented democracy. But consider the facts in relation to the great difference in population. Britain's air production equals or surpasses that of Germany, and her total armament production approaches that of Germany. Further, with practically rio v exti a labour and in spite of the great replacement of men with women, juveniles, and old people, Britain is producing twice the food she did before the war. Consider, too, the Herculean efforts to aid Russia, to supply munitions to all theatres of war and all threatened zones (including New Zealand), and to keep vast shipping convoys moving.. Words are an inadequate medium for admiration of this heroic achievement. It calls for deeds in response. In New Zealand we should forget all that has been' said of us, or by ourselves, in praise of our own effort, and look instead at what Britain has done and is doing. We should remember that this country has not yet had one bomb to disturb life or dislocate industry, and we should ask ourselves purposefully: How can we immediately raise our achievement till It is worthy of the Mother Country's great example?