The Franklin Times PUBLISHED EVERY MONDAY, WEDNESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOON. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23. 1940. COUNTRY LADS IN EGYPT!

Franklin Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 21, 23 February 1940, Page 4

The Franklin Times PUBLISHED EVERY MONDAY, WEDNESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOON.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23. 1940. COUNTRY LADS IN EGYPT!

Oilice and Works: RO rT LSTON STREET, PUKEKOHE. 'Phone No. 2. P.O. Box 14. “We nothing extenuate nor aught set down in malice.' 1

IN 1110 opinion oi' Hi** German newspuper "Lokal Anzeiger.” Ihe humour inliercnl in Air Deeds going' lo town also al.ladies lo Hie New Zealanders going to Egypt. The New Zealanders are Handy Andys who can only he smiled al —“just poor country lads who do iinf know wind il is all about.“ This vein of humour is not always met with in Berlin comment, and is on the whole rallier welcome. More olten one finds the Nazis vehement and ahusive: they delight in applying to those whom they disapprove such words as “scum,'’ and that is indeed the precise term applied in "Mein Kampr ' recently republished without apology) lo Russia’s rulers. The fact that the author. Hitler, has made a pad with the chief of the scum leaders. Slalin, provides r humorous background on which the “Lokal Anzeiger" will prefer not lo dwell; in Dial paper’s opinion. Europe would he ready, were il not for the truly rural character of the Anzaes. lo "rock with laughter" at. their temerity—but Europe will .not dare lo rock with laughter at I lie German Handy Andys, of all ages and stages, who accept the Hitlerian injunction that the Stalinites are thugs, thieves, and murderers, and therefore to he embraced. The comedy attached to New Zealanders going lo Egypt seems lo pale before the sardonic* humour in which Riblxmlrop went lo Moscow —nevertheless it is a relief to find that comedy is among the weapons the Nazis claim lo use. If (he comedy were carried back to the war of 1914-18, il would be found that German military experts, in confidential reports to their own chiefs, valued the Anzac divisions as being among the most effective in the enemy (Allied) line on the Western Front; one well-known German soldier classed them in the front rank of shock troops. And these are the fathers or big brothers of the present day’s “poor country lads who do not know what it is all about.” Is the joke on the German military experts of 1014-18, or is it on the “Lokal Anzeiger”? When the German editor advances from comedy to imagination, he pictures the -bones of the Anzaes bleaching in the desert; but the fathers and forerunners of the Anzaes know much more about that desert than does the “Lokal Anzeiger,” having fought over it in 1914-18. with Allenby. Certainly they left some bones in the desert, but most of the bones were not theirs. Imagination goes further when the “Lokal Anzeiger” sees bones mouldering on Russian steppes. It is true that the war may spread to Russian steppes, but it is not yet certain that Russia’s leaders —Hitler’s scum associates —will share the “Lokal Anzeiger’s” view that the landing in Egypt of a number of poor country lads is merely a continental joke. The Russian Government, with which the Allied Governments are not at war, may decide that that condition is to continue. If so, the rural crusaders from New Zealand will have struck a blow for peace, and, however bucolic they may be, they are quite as alive to that alternative as to the other.