ONLY HOPE OF SURVIVAL SEEN IN MORE PEOPLE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22822, 17 December 1948, Page 2

ONLY HOPE OF SURVIVAL SEEN IN MORE PEOPLE

“It is the duty of those who have served in both wars to see that the conditions of service are maintained, for that is the only hope of survival for our children and grandchildren,” said the Dominion president of the N.Z.R.S.A., Sir Howard Kippenberger, in an informal talk to the executive of the Dunedin R.S-A. “It is their duty to see that Australia and New Zealand are well defended,” he said.

“We cannot expect to hold this territory beyond 1980. We can only do so if we increase our joint populations to 50,000,000 and are well prepared. Then we would have a chance —a sporting chance. “We in Australia and New Zealand think we can continue to occupy, without effort, two of the most attractive countries in the world. Despite what people say,” Sir Howard Kippenberger said, "this can not be so. We have some protection in space. The only other protection is in a rapid increase of population and in having our economy constantly geared for defence and people who are well aware of the danger in which they live and are prepared to face it.” Speaking of communism. Sir Howard said it was the greatest menace to our way of living and to what people of British stock had worked for for several hundreds of years. It was not communism as communism that was so horrible, but the police state which it ushered in. Within the next four months, he said, we would see communism 'established in China. That might be all right for the Chinese, but it would, not be for us, especially if the Russians got control of that country within the next five years. In Indonesia there were 70 to 80 millions of people crowded together. There was Malaya to which Britain had managed to hold, and there was India. Altogether, there were hundreds of millions of Asiatics within 72 hours of New Zealand, and in Australia and the Dominion there were 10 million people. These Asiatics could be equipped and ready for an aggressive war within 25 years.