New Zealanders And The Ostrich Lesson

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 August 1948, Page 5

New Zealanders And The Ostrich Lesson

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, This Day. . “We are living in a dangerous world. A silent and grim battlefront has moved westward in Central Europe under a baffling disguise. It moves under cover—the cover of democrac} 7 itself—though it is as different from democracy as chalk is from cheese,” said the High Commissioner for the United Kingdom, Sir Patrick Duff, in an address in Wellington today.

Sir Patrick said that those people in New Zealand who thought they need not worry because they were buried far away in the midst of the wide spaces of the Pacific were about as realistic as an ostrich, which, because its head was buried in the sand, thought its head was safe and ornamental.

The battlefront which had been moving across Europe was Communism, which now controlled the Government of about onethird of the world’s population, he continued.

Since 1939, Russia had moved her frontier nearly 1000 miles westward. The momentum of her conquests, he said, had by no means stopped and the urge for expansion, which was a fundamental tenet of Communism’s aggressive creed, was as restless as ever. . The sickness which was making the world a passive prey was spiritual sickness, he said.