SERVICE FROM ALL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23325, 19 April 1939, Page 12

SERVICE FROM ALL

The Prime Minister spoke significant words yesterday when he Baid the strengthening of New Zealand's defences was "one in which we can all give assistance." He might have gone further and said one in which all must give assistance in their various capacities. This should be done, not under compulsion, but from a sense of duty. The world faces the spectacle of the totalitarian nations controlled, mobilised—or prepared for universal mobilisation —and regimented to the extreme point. Opposed to them in ideas and in conception of a proper way of life are the democracies. The signs are ominous for the two types being opposed in a more direct and more sinister way. It is not a foregone conclusion that this will come to pass, but the risk of it is too real and too full of peril to be passed lightly by. The people of the totalitarian countries are under discipline, an iron discipline imposed from above. The only way the democracies can match them is by a discipline of equal substance, but far superior in spirit by being a discipline imposed by general consent. But it cannot be improvised at a moment's notice. If there are tasks for air in New Zealand, then they should be organised, and their nature made plain to those who must shoulder them. This is the duty and responsibility of the Government. It has certain advantages. In Australia a proposed universal national register has been hotly denounced. In New Zealand the adult population is at present enrolling on a national register with admirable docility. It is not for the purposes of defence, but its smooth progress suggests that a similar register as the basis of a universal rally to the service of the country could be made with equal facility.