THE WAR EFFORT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 73, 23 September 1943, Page 8

THE WAR EFFORT

"CANT BE TOO MUCH"

MR. SEMPLE'S SURVEY

From an audience of • probably a thousand'in the Capitol Theatre, Miramar, last night Mr. R. Semple, Labour candidate for Wellington East, received a: most enthusiastic hearing; particularly well received was ■ that section of his address referring to New Zealand's war work, by the men overseas aridi men and women at home. From the back of the theatre a succession of interjections started. The chairman, Mr; E. E. Canham, ordered the offenders out after several warnings. "Let them stay," said the candidate. "I can handle 'em. lam not going to have Lee and Scrim bash-gangs interfering with me. The decent thing to do is for you to hold your, questions until I am finished, and then the sky's the limit." There were few more remarks from that section. "When we came into office we had insufficient strength to protect a currant bun from the attack of a blowfly. But if Japs could be killed with wheelbarrows we could have stoushed them —we had plenty of barrows," he said. Long before the war, Labour members said, and the Hansard records proved it, that war was coming in the Pacific. In 1918 he had said what he thought about the strength of Singapore, and was howled down for saying so. Who was right? "Two years before the war we quietly slipped machines to Fiji and Tonga and built x aerodromes there secretly. There was no criticism; they didn't know." It was plain as the day, he said, that the Japs would strike south, through the back-door to Singapore, through Sumatra and Java, but then which way? Through New Guinea to Australia, or through the island chain to New Caledonia and Norfolk Island to New' Zealand. Nobody knew, but what would .have been said if the Government had failed to do the utmost to meet the big chance of their coming down this way, to cut the Pacific lifeline to Australia? Whai stopped them this way?" From the hall: Probably your tanks, Bob. Mr. Semple: If that is a cheap sneer, you keep it. I had the vision to try and create something while a lot of others were just snivelling. (Laughter and applause.) AUSTRALIANS AND AMERICANS. In fact, they went the other way, through New Guinea, and they hoped, to Australia, but the Australians stopped them in the Owen Stanley Ranges, and the Americans smashed them in the Coral Sea and Midway Battles. "Australia and America saved New Zealand. Now there is a bit of a lull, but it is not over yet by a long way, and our Mr. Doidge, broadcasting from Ashburton, says that we have done too much for the Americans. We have certainly done what we could, but there is no such thing as too much for boys who helped to save us and all that- is decent in life from a people who live under the law of the jungle and possess the morals of. the monkey house —the Japanese. We did all we could to entice the Americans to come here and help us defend ourselves. It was our bounden duty to ask them. We undertook to supply and to house their men. We will meet it. ' .. . "So today we have more equipment, more strength, than ever we dreamed of. You have just outside your city thousands of men, armed and trained. When I built Ngahauranga Gorge and the coastal highways I was Public Enemy No. 1. Any complaints now?" (Applause.) When, the Pacific situation was most deadly the public did not know, but the Government did, c and •: did things* easy to criticise in ignorance, but imperative in the.face of facts. He described in general terms camps and coastal defence'works, stores, munition dumps, specialist defence works, huge hospital buildings, these last for American sick and wounded. "What would you have," he asked, "hospitals for thousands'of Americans, or would you let them rot in the jungle with gunshot and bomb wounds or stricken with malaria? Mr. Doidge says we have'done too much. What is too much while still a bit more can be done?" (Applause.) . Mr. Semple spoke also of the flying, start the Labour Government had made in aerodrome construction, under the able guidance of (then), Group Captain the Hon. R. A. Cochrane, when the Government threw out wheelbarrows and brought in power machinery. He got a long laugh with a story of more wheelbarrows" at Blenheim and a home-made concrete . roller, manhandled, at Palmerston North, and went on to describe the construction of the rest of the Dominion aerodrome chain, before the war that they could see coming. P.W.D. PLANT OVERSEAS. "Where did that plant end up?" he asked. "Some did good work in the Pacific, but there's another story. Within five days from a request made by Sir Harry Batterbee, a shipload of machinery, with operators and mechanics, trained by us after being freed from the 'slave camps,' left for Egypt. There they made a world record in railway track laying, and the story of how they helped to carve landing strips so that •Maori-and pakeha wounded could be evacuated to hospital from the last push of Rommel from Africa still has to be told. Who was right about buying plant from a foreign country? But I never did look on America as foreign. Some people did see this coming." He spoke also of production in many fields, on. farms, by. good New Zealand hens, and .in factories. "Tonight Russians . are chasing Germans, in New Zealand boot's, and tomorrow Americans'will stalk Japanese,in .New Zealand boots, and our chaps,wear them too." / (Laughter.) "Eggs are scarce, eh? v Arid a dear Old "lady complains: 'I had only one egg for, breakfast and I .ought to have two.' They ;'have : been scarce;all right, and no wonder, for in recent months we have sent 20 million to feed our boys, and American boys stricken with malaria, back to .health. And just as long as they need them they are going to get them, and the old lady will- get only one. She might not get that, but the boys will get theirs." (Cheers and laughter.) . With one dissentient vote Mr. Semple and the Labour Goyernment were accorded the good wishes of the audience..

"I think that when one public man quotes another he should do it fairly," said the leader of the National Party (Mr. S. G. Holland) in his address in Wellington last night. "The other day Mr. Semple did a despicable thing. He took from Hansard two words of mine from the end of one sentence and added the next two words, to make me say, 'Social security. . It. is lunacy.' What I did :■ say was that we agreed with social security, but it was lunacy to promise things until we' could see the money in sight. Don't you think it would have been more honest to have quoted the whole sentence?"