The Grey River Argus FRIDAY, June 23, 1944. THE HUMAN ELEMENT.

Grey River Argus, 23 June 1944, Page 4

The Grey River Argus FRIDAY, June 23, 1944. THE HUMAN ELEMENT.

11l spite of the expression ( “good news’’ to describe any i gain made in the war by the Allies, there probably are not many people who, taking a long view and a sober view, could get much satisfaction from the state of human affairs as it is revealed each day in the cable news. Indeed, were the full truth of it brought home to us day by clay in vivid pictures—were we, as we read our paper or listened to the radio, to live through half an hour or an hour of the horror that is being lived through by those who are doing fthe fighting or are in other ways coming directly in contact with, it—we might find it intolerable. One probable reason for our being able to put up with it all as a part of our everyday lives is that the military movements are described in terms that do not really move us very much We hear of the armies “sweeping on,” of “pincer movements,” “flank attacks,” “rearguard actions,” “fighter sweeps,” and the like. Do those things really mean very much to us? Some years ago, in an essay, the noted critic, Mr Edward Garnett, quoted an of-1 ficial military report: “Thanks to| the efforts of our valiant regi- j merits of ithe Caucasus and Turk-1 estan, the resistance of the enemy was shattered. His rear-guards which were covering his retreat were annihilated.” Mr. Garnett remarked that the item, no doubt, pleased ithe Russian public more than a little item by a correspondent, who wrote that he saw the Turkish prisoners fighting like wild beasts for scraps of food in the cattle trucks, and Mat he had noticed one prisoner hold a wounded comrade down on his hands and knees, and then mount astride his back to eat the crust of bread he had torn from him. The comparison puts the matter clear]y enough, and it should not require much of an effort of imagination to shift the scene to to-day. None of us really knows what war means as the common people, of Russia, of Finland, of Italy, of France, of China, or the bomlbed of London and Berlin, know it. We are not now moved very much, if at all, by thousand bomb er raids on the cities of Europe, and the ruins of Tilly and Montebourg are for us not much more than paragraphs in the story of an advance. We do not dwell, too long on iihe ransacked cottages, the burnt-out farms, the tanks and the machine-guns in the narrow lanes close on the agonised flight of the refugee families. It may be that we are not meant to think of these things, since military necessity knows no laws. Yet. may it not do good in the long run if we should realise it all, occasionally at any rate, that out of that realisation we may reach, not merely a hope, but a resolve, that it shall never happen again?