NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23774, 30 September 1940, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS

' FIRST THINGS FIRST "Tho British people are at their best when there is a real sense of common danger," said Sir Walter Citrine, general secretary of tho Trades Union Congress, in a speech to workers' delegates. "It is the knack of this inconsistent, illogical race of ours to do tho supremely right thing. The danger is real, our situation is grave and the future is obscure, but one thing will prevail, and that is the determination of the common men and women in this country to allow no side wind to disturb them or cause them not to keep their eyes inflexibly on the goal ahead—that is the destruction of the forces whicli are aimed against our freo institution. Put aside your small grumbles and remember tho big thing."

NOT DISCREDITABLE DELAY By comparison with the Prussian clement in Germany, kindled to fierce enmity by the foul breath of the Nazis, the British arc not now a warlike race, writes a correspondent to the Children's Newspaper. We have been so in the past, but the centuries have been civilising us. It is true that wo can fight under provocation, and fight magnificently; but we are not born with the desire for war. Wo love peace and covet the things that belong to peace. If we have been slow in measuring up Hitler and his Nazis, it is to bo deplored, hut is scarcely culpable, for it means that somehow we could not believe in tho existenco of such contemptible things. It means that, having no such cruelty in our hearts, wo found it hard to impute it to our enemies. 'Our slowness in recognising the true colours of the enemy has had disastrous results, yet we need not ho ashamed that we have been slow. No doubt the thief quickly recognises the thief, but a gentleman is often slow to see that a man is a bully. We know the truth now. We are recognising all the Nazi creed implies. We are roused to give battle against this beastly thing which is polluting tho earth, and it is doomed.