The Evening Post. WELLINGTON, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 27. 1944.

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 128, 27 November 1944, Page 4

The Evening Post. WELLINGTON, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 27. 1944.

BOMBS, BOREDOM, AND WAR-WEARINESS

War-weariness in factories and workplaces is a widespread phenomena. It is by no means confined to areas where bombs fall. In fact, one would not be! astonished to hear that, the farther the! factory is from possible bombing the | greater the difficulty in securing con- j tinued application to the factory's war' work. The explanation of this seeming paradox may be that 'workers of all kinds are less vulnerable to. fear than to ennui; many a man who could not be driven from his post of duty by bombs can be lured away from it by boredom and by a desire to change an environment that has become not dangerous but tedious. Bombs can—■ and in some cases do—make workers feel the need and importance of their labour; the sense of danger at least combats the sense of monotony. But to be hundreds of miles or thousands of miles from possible danger tends to dull the sense of responsibility. The worker is liable to become tired of exhortations to labour for a distant war-front that seems to be getting along all right. In this tendency to lose the sense of war-urgency the worker is assisted by optimistic headlines that are without foundation. The optimistic commentator or % chronicler had his -uses when the Allies'* war'outlook was black; but, when promise of victory arises, his optimism works in reverse. Workers who have never been bombed are lured into an impression that the war is over. But workers in the danger area know better. Is it, then, really a paradox if the unbombed leave the war job before the bombed? German workers today are not lulled into lethargy by any optimism, either official or unofficial. They are not under any impression that they can quit work because the war does not want them; and if they are bombed out, the Gestapo helps them to make up their mind to return to the repaired factory. In any case, they cannot possibly regard their labour as unnecessary. In Britain, also, the worker is slower to believe optimistic 'headlines than is the worker in America. The British Minister of Labour (Mr. Bevin) is reported today as saying: "This trouble in the United States arose because immediately the Allies went through France and Belgium into Holland the Press and many responsible people in industry in America assumed that the war was over. They shouted for the rapid reconversion of thousands of people from the Services and war work into civilian industry. Thousands of people ran out of munition-factories, and munitions production completely broke down in many "places. In America and this country, employers, the Press, and trade unions will have to keep their heads when these Allied advances take place, otherwise we shall be landed in a mess in munitions production." When the German Comm-ander-in-Chief ordered the evacuation of France he probably did not know that his order would be obeyed in some of the Allied factories; but this seems to have happened, and the fact deserves a place in the library of war curiosities. A sliding scale between the retreat of the German armies and the retreat from the Allied factories is one of the things that the Allied strategy does not require, and therefore heed should be paid on both sides of the Atlantic to Mr. Bevin's warning: "If the British Government had not had a pretty good grip, this clamour for release from the Services might have had serious results here a few months ago. Everyone pestered my life out to release people from the Army. If I had listened to them—well, Hitler might have beaten us." When our war goes badly, our generals are worried. When it goes well, our man-power and munitional Ministers are worried in their turn. Political pliancy then becomes a danger. On this showing, a Minister like Mr. Bevin could qualify for the Victoria Cross. In one aspect, the desire of the! worker to quit his factory, in a never-to-be-bombed area, is like the desire of a schoolboy to play truant on a fine afternoon. In another aspect, the desire to quit may be based on life in a mushroom town that has sprung up around a temporary war industry; fear of the collapse of the mushroom urges the worker to fresh fields. la yet another aspect, an employer is itching to return from a temporary war industry to a permanent peacetime enterprise, and will desire'to be first in the industrial reconversion, and to create for himself a favourable labour market. On the international plane, entrepreneurs of all grades and kinds, eager to be into new industrial and trade opportunities, will be inclined to jump off the train while it is still in motion, in order to show in foreign countries the flag— their country's and their own. It is clear that, from many angles, there is a tendency to misapply optimistic stories of the war. According to Charles C. Bolte in the New York "Nation," even the military are not guiltless: "In many cases the military themselves have led the reporters up the primrose path. The air-power boys have sinned most grievously in this respect, and hurt their weapon by claiming feats for it too extravagantly. But all is better now, with victories galore, and the current malicious gag in Washington is that the war has finally caught up with General Arnold." But if the retreat from the factories gathers too much momentum, the war may fail to catch up; and Germany may gain in defeat something of the relief she could not secure for herself in victory.