NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23626, 9 April 1940, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS

CONDITIONS IN THE REICH Everything reliable that I hoar about the condition of Germany servos as warning against facile assumptions of an early collapse of civilian morale, writes "Janus" in the Spectator. The food situation is. of course, had, and the cold spell, with its effect on transport. makes it temporarily worse. But for months or years before the war the German Government bad been building up lingo reserves of tinned goods, principally, it appears, tinned liani, which will keep the country going a long time in case of need, "Ersatz. ' (substitute) foods, moreover, such as artificial coffee, while they form a considerable part of the dietary, are by no means entirely a war expedient. Some of them have been in use since the last war, and the population, or rather its poorer sections, is perfectly familiar with them. They iorm no now hardship. WASTE IN WARTIME We British have never, even in our worst chapters, of insular distress, had to undergo the extremes of want and misery with which war and rapine have 011 occasion visited the majority of Continental countries, says the London Observer. We have not, therefore, had burnt in upon us in the same fashion the truth that waste is both a folly and a crime. But the hour has come when that lesson must be faced —irksome as it may be from unfamiliarity. If the householder is not prompted by high taxation to acquire a new virtue in his own interests, he has the plain duty of practising it as a branch of patriotism. It arises from the fact that we must not buy more from abroad than we can possibly help. There are limits to our capacity to pay. There are limits to our capacity to carry. Certain material of war we must have. But if there is to be any comfortable margin of money and shipping for that purpose, our importation of everything else must bo kept to standards of sheer necessity.

WAR WORK FOR WOMEN The problem of war economy is to man and equip the Forces, to raise output for war and export needs to the utmost and to cut down civilian consumption and manufacture accordingly, asserts the Economist. The role of women in this process is crucial. It is to release men for fighting and war work, either by taking up industrial employment for tho first time or by moving from the non-essential trades where they predominate into essential occupations. 111 Great Britain there are nearly six and a-half million women in paid employment already, and estimates of the single women, widows and wives at present unoccupied, but available for work in emergency, run as high as four millions, and can certainly be put at nearly three millions. Many women are already in essential work in textiles, aircraft manufacture, armaments and Government service. But, by transferring those that are not and by drawing upon the "idle" reserves (as well as upon male and female unemployed, elderly people and boys), an eventual net loss of three to four million men to the Forces from industry could certainly be made up. SLOW BUT STRONG AND SURE "On condition of fair play for all, the British will make every sacrifice that is asked of them; they will make any sacrifice that their chosen leaders say is needed," asserted Sir William Beveridge in a recent broadcast talk. "They will thus he more efficient than the enemy, for efficiency in totalitarian war is in the end a question of trust between the loaders and the people. Democracies are horribly slow to move, there's 110 denying it. They are particularly slow to move to war —I don't want to deny that or change that. The British democracy and the governments it chooses sometimes seem to bate the very thought of looking ahead. 1 rather wish they would change that a little. But once they do begin, once it comes to a show-down between democracy and any other system, ( our British democracy will always prove to be more efficient than any tyrant-ridden State can be. It will be more efficient because it is democratic. Because it is knit' together by conscious determination in every member, it will be less likely than a dictatorship to crack under the strain of totalitarian war." YOUTH IN CONFLICT

"The existence of war in Europe today is a sign of failure, or ot something more than failure, in our Western civilisation." said the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, in addressing students at Oxford University, of which lie is Chancellor. "When 1 consider that wo —who hate war —are driven to the use of force; that you are asked to be the instruments of this force in maintaining against bitter and evil attack the first principles upon which European life lias hitherto been based, the darkness that hangs over Europe seems to me something which Milton might have described as darkness visible. Moreover, I am appalled—there is no easier word for it —by one fact above all. This "waste land" in which we live, this European civilisation in which the lamps arc burning dim, has not been brought to its present pass merely by the mistakes, the pride, and the selfishness of an older generation. What has, for example, been the driving force behind the Nazi movement in Germany? It has been German youth. Deliberately deprived as they have been of the elements of true judgment, it is they who made the movement and who still sustain it. Their point of view stands in stark opposition to yours. They do not understand your way of thinking. Your ideals mean nothing to them They ' have their own ideals, which to our minds are distorted and deformed, but for which hundreds of thousands of them are prepared without a moment's hesitation to sacrifice their lives. There is what seems an impenetrable barrier dividing you' from them, which somehow will have to be broken down if the youth of Europe is to avoid living always in this waste land and if the European temple of civilisation is to deserve and win a rekindling of the lamps. The real conflict, therefore, today is not between age and youth, but between youth and youth. It is. important that this should be fully .appreciated, for it. is the kernel of our future problems."