MORAL REARMAMENT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 88, 13 March 1941, Page 8

MORAL REARMAMENT.

STORY OF A BOOK. A cablegram received by Moral Rearmament interests in New Zealand from, London states that, speaking from a shelter in London, on March 2, Peter Howard, the well-known political columnist, broadcaster, and English Rugby captain, in a 8.8. C. broadcast, referring to Daphne du Maurier, compared her message in “Come Wind, Come Weather” to Queen Bess galloping down to Tilbury from London on a horse. She gave ,the people in those far-off days the message they wanted. - , “You all know the end of that attempted invasion,” he said. “To-day we are again faced with invasion and other women have rallied the people of Britain. One in particular has spoken in a way which has made it possible for many folk wlio would otherwise have been scared and useless to stand up through the winter of bombing and battle. This woman is Daphne dll Maurier, the writer. She helped to put steel in our hearts with her book, ‘Come Wind. Come leather , published here on a day which nobody in this island will forget—ylast Angus 15 —the first day 'on which we were warned to expect an attempted landing bv the Nazis. A Liverpool workman told a friend that he had been so scared of air raids before reading ‘Come Wind, Come Weather that he had gone into the shelter the moment he came home from ' v °rk, there was a raid or not. That book cured him of his' ‘jitters.’ To-day he is an air raid warden out all daj through the ‘blitz’ helping people. What ‘Come Wind, Come Weather did for the Liverpool workman: it is doing to countless thousands in this island. There is no doubt that the book has helped as much as anvtlung else to put back into the ordinary people here the spirit we used to have. I do not think there is any real hope for the future after the war unless the spirit of this book becomes normal in our country, in yours, and through the world. Daphne du Maurier says: ‘We regret the past. It is- closed for ever. We look to the future. Life has become an adventure once again.’ Strange yet terrible though' the thougiit may be, it has taken the war to do this tor us. We are neighbourly now where once we were snobbish and cold, A spirit of comradeship has been born in us—a desire to help and to share —the will not only to break the power of two dictators, but to break the spirit of dictatorship within to conquer the dictator in ourselves. Before we build that new world of ours of which we hear so much, but of which we know so little, selfishness will have to be dislodged and that does not just stand for the fellow next door. It means- that you and I will have to become different, too, that like the men and women in ‘Come Wind, Come Weather’ we will listen to God daily and receive and obey His orders. This is the secret which these fighters for M.R.A. have given us. It is the secret of a new and better world.”