“FIGHT OR PERISH.”

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 292, 14 November 1941, Page 4

“ FIGHT OR PERISH.”

“We are now in a position where we must light or perish. I am astounded at the complacency with which the people of Australia view the war.” These words were spoken by General Sir Thomas Blarney on his return to Sydney from the Middle East, where as General Officer Commanding the Australian Imperial Force he has proved himself one of the Empire’s outstanding commanding officers. He has been recalled to discuss war matters with the new Government, and finds the young men living a carnival life in ‘‘civilisation’s greatest period of menace.” He is staggered, lie said, to find that Australia’s young men do not feel their place is in the ranks. This warning against complacency, which has the directness of the experienced soldier who knows what Nazism means, has been given on several occasions in the Commonwealth where the voluntary system of recruiting is maintained, as it was in the last war, as a sort of fetish. But General Blarney has said, in words not to be misunderstood, that there can be only one system —that which brings all eligible men into the ranks to play their part, else their “homes will be overwhelmed as they have been in France and Belgium.” In the early months of the war the late Sir Henry Gullet!, then Minister of Information, observed that “this is a war in which the British Empire can be beaten” ; a few weeks ago the president of the Constitutional Association (Hr F. Louat), in outstanding criticism of Australian propaganda, declared that “there seems to be a feeling on the part of those in authority that to admit the bare possibility that we might lose this war would strike a blow at public morale. v In Dr Louat’s opinion there is in Australia no appreciation of what total war means, or of the dangers threatening Australia, but a belief that the war will pass the country like a far-off storm. It is to correct these wrong beliefs that grave warnings have been issued by responsible leaders, and they are none the less applicable to this country where apathy towards the war is not unknown.