N.Z.'S WAR EFFORT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 108, 3 November 1942, Page 4

N.Z.'S WAR EFFORT

INFERIORITY COMPLEX?

LACK OF INFORMATION

(0.C.) CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. "In New Zealand we are suffering from an inferiority complex about our own war effort. I am not a New Zealander, but I am proud of the effort New Zealand is making," said Mr. C. \V Smith, president of the New Zealand Manufacturers' Federation, at the annual conference today. "I admit that there are some things of which we should be ashamed. Strikes, absenteeism, short hours, goslow policies, and the selfishness of some people in aU walks of life are a blot on any war effort and are inexcusable, but surely a country's war effoi}! should be judged by what the big majority are doing and not by the actions of small sections. In New Zealand we get things out of perspective and our.morale suffers. We see indecision on the part of the Government and we despair. We see strikes and we wonder if the country is worth fighting for. We see stupid mistakes made by people in authority and we thank God for America. What we must realise is that these very things are going on in every democratic country today. They are the results of democracy, yet is there anybody here who would exchange the privileges of cursing the Government for the rigid discipline of a dictatorship? 'Under democracy it is what the majority of people do that counts in the long run. „ j RIGID CENSORSHIP. "One thing we haven't done has been to sell ourselves to ourselves,'" said Mr. Smith. "Compared with that of other countries, our publicity with certain exceptions, such as the National Film Unit, has been very poor and uninspiring in its production, probably to a large extent due to a censorship that has been far too rigid and unimaginative. "The average man or woman who reads in newspapers what other countries are doing, who sees films or examines the propaganda put out by these countries and who doesn't know what his own country is doing, cannot be blamed for thinking that this country is doing very little.

"Nothing succeeds like success, and nothing impedes progress more than an inferiority complex. A united war effort must involve each man knowing what the other man is doing. It must also involve the knowledge of the part in the war effort that he is playing himself." Mr. Smith emphasised the splendid part the factories were playing in the production of arms and military equipment of all kinds. "Where before we were producing in hundreds today we are producing in tens of thousands, and where we were producing in hundreds of thousands we are producing in millions," he said. "Surely we as manufacturers have reason to be proud of our effort."

In summarising the Dominion's war effort, he said there were 160,000 men in the armed forces, 150,000 engaged in farming, 110,000 in factory industry, tens of thousands of women doing war work, and there were only in all about 900,000 men and women between the ages of 18 and 60. "I believe thai we can and will do even more," he added. "Sir Harry Batterbee was right when he said: " . . of all British countries overseas, New Zealand has a record second to none. . . .' And it should be the pride in what we have done that should be the spur to further efforts."