WAR’S LESSONS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 3 October 1944, Page 4

WAR’S LESSONS

KNOCKING HORSE SENSE INTO THEIR HEADS making for a better world NEW ZEALAND’S NEED FOR MORE POPULATION (By James Lansdale Hodson, wellknown British Novelist and War Correspondent who has recently returned to England after visiting Italy) I have no doubt that our British troops will make their own ironic comments on the fact that with the war in Europe so comparatively at an end the Government should have decided to raise their pay. They will be pleased all the same. We infantrymen used to say in the last war that if it went on long enough we should be fighting it really well. We’ve certainly made a lot of progress in this war and not only technically. There has been some broadening of minds among the powers that be. I’m thinking of the Army Bureau of Current Affairs and Army Education which, between them have given a lot of our soldiers a course in adult education. Just before I left Italy I spent an hour or two at G.H.Q. talking to the man in charge of those things in that theatre of war. The Army Education began originally—it was long years ago—in order to make soldiers better able to imbibe {heir military and technical training; in short, to make them better soldiers. But the same department is now bent on an ambitious scheme for turrting them back into civilians and enabling them by training, during the post-armistice period, to be better citizens and betterequipped to earn their livelihood. GIGANTIC SCHEME FOR ADULT EDUCATION This scheme is probably going to be the biggest in the shape of adult education the world has known. In Italy alone the army wants 60,000 reference books—that’s 400 volumes for each unit. In addition they want 300,000 textbooks on a tremendous variety of subjects, from carpentry to law, and from farm, ing to banking. The C.O. estimates that he will require 10,000 instructors. Both the mobilisation plan just announced and this education plan sound a marked advance on our methods in 1918. We’re getting on. (In passing it is maybe worth noting that 38 A.B.C.A. groups which function at G.H.Q. have been debating changes that they would like to see in the Army newspaper. They think it a good paper but* the majority would take out photographs and headlines because the first are too poor and the second a waste of space. They dislike articles beginning on one page and ending on another and they want more news of Parliament and more space for letters to the editor. They are against any man writing a daily column and argue that he cannot keep it up. What they appreciate highly is a paper giving both sides to the question).

DOES NOT ALWAYS MUDDLE THROUGH

A young Radical friend said yesterday, “We’ve shown in this war that Britain doesn’t always muddle through and we've shown that we can organise superbly—look at these invasions of the Continent which have gone like clockwork, and look at the harbours we’ve built on the beaches. There is no excuse any more for unemployment and slums and underfeeding. Using even half the vision and energy and invention and pulling together that we’ve done in this war. what is there we cannot do? We’ve virtually exploded all arguments of the old fogies and better-notters who said that we can’t afford this and mustn’t do that.”

That’s the voice of idealistic youth. It’s going to be strong in Britain. Men who have been risking their lives while the nation has been spending fifteen millions per day aren’t going to brook old gentlemen saying that we cannot afford to build the right sorts of houses ifl the right numbers. "You could, were you so minded, set down a few credit items on a balance sheet of even a war as horrible as this, and an awakening of the minds of many folk and some hardening of the vigorous idealism of the young people is one of those items SOME OF THE PROGRESS We’ve given coalminers a minimum of £5 a week, we’ve opened up shipyards that have been derelict and we’ve made wastelands fruitful and cultivated millions of acres that lay idle. Our evacuation exposed hideous sores in the form of children under-nourished and ill brought-up and I hope that we shall be sensible enough to profit by the exposure. LEVELLING-UP Our heavy taxation ana our rationing of foods has willy-nilly achieved some levelling-up of the nation. Fewer folk have gone hungry and fewer have gorged themselves; the poor have been a trifle better off and the rich a little less rich. There’s a long way to go yet in both directions. Our medical scien. tists have given us penicillin and I’ve no doubt the advances made during the last war in plastic surgery—that beneficent skill which mends features which the war has devilishly mutilated —have made fresh strides.

All this is trifling when set against men who are dead and wounded children made fatherless and wives widows; when set against disease and poverty and suffering and hatred that are overrunning a very large part of the world. But perhaps we’ve made some progress towards preventing war happening again, or, at all events, happening anything like so soon as before. It’s reasonable to think that some horse sense has been knocked into our thick heads on the subject of collective security and the indivisibility of peace on the need for countries which respect law and order standing together in a wicked world. TASK FOR THE WAR’S SURVIVORS I suppose we of the Commonwealth realise now that had we gone down in 1940 the world would have fallen into a new Dark Age. That seems a pretty good argument tor the Commonwealth and for it growing stronger rather than weaker. Recently I talked in Naples with a New Zealand major, a man who said that he had come to the Western Desert in 1941 as black haired as a raven, but who is now very grey round the ears. He said that New Zealand could do with eight million more people. That was his own quite personal view. Others may think the figure should be halved. How many millions Australia wishes to have or could absorb, or Canada or South Africa. I’m ignorant of. But I believe a good many young men of Britain who have fought overseas in this war and rubbed shoulders with our Dominions’ troops will be attracted by the Dominions’ life. If any of my children wanted to go over, seas after the war and the Dominion concerned were willing to take them, I should say, “Go, and God bless you.” One other thing I hope the war has taught us —that we shall be wise to raise, so far as we can, not only our own standard of living but that of the other nations also. Needy among the nations like the poor among individuals aren’t going to remain unmindful or not jealous of those better-off. It’s for 1 us who survive the war to try and profit by what we’ve learnt, that our children or theirs in turn may not have to pay again this monstrous price. We may not succeed altogether but we can succeed in part anyhow.