Symbols of the Future

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23850, 28 December 1940, Page 4 (Supplement)

Symbols of the Future

By JOYCE JEFFERY

CCf ET us make the most of these 8 holidays and this summer, "-A for who knows what 1941 may hold in stove !" How many times these words have been uttered within the past few weeks! A haunting dread of what To-morrow may bring lurks behind our laughter, shapes our plans, colours our very thoughts. We realise, if we are given to introspection, that our war selves are different selves, that a new mentality directs our actions. We have not yet forgotten the Christmas message of peace and goodwill toward all men and we have flinched at the hate steadily growing and seething in the world about us. Slowly we have become aware with J. Middl'eton Murry who wrote during the last war—"There are moments when each man is secretly convinced that in himself he bore the seeds of: this great disruption by reason ol his own disharmony . . . and each one ol us may be in a secret hour convinced that he must bear the burden of the guilt of the war. We speak, knowing that inasmuch as we are symbols ol the guilt we are symbols also of the hope and the future." Having acknowledged these things we are closer to the .1 ruth that must be our guide in this new year; knowing these things there is no hate in us any more, only shame and pitv tor ourselves and for humanity. It has so often been said of war that the further away one moved from the trenches and the theatre of conflict, the greater the hate. The popularity of the more detached fighting services, the men's obvious shunning of hand to hand lighting, proves that those who have offered their lives have 110 lust to kill. If destroy they must, then let it be as remote as possible from any individual element: only thus can tliev endure it. If we have right on our side, as we believe, we dare not hate. II we dare bring God into this war, with prayers of intercession, we dare not hate. We fight for justice and hate has no part in the weapons which justice calls _hei own. We fight for an ideal and idealism cannot ask hate to accompany her on

A Neu) War Mentality for 1941

to the field of battle. The cesspools of hate must be purified. I once heard a woman talking in a, tram, duty chiselled into every line of her thin-lipped face. "Foreigners! I wouldn't shake hands with any of them! I'd rather walk out of the room! . . . Yes, and I've pulled every single cornflour out of my garden because they're German flowers." Startled tears sprang to eyes that remembered the blue in fields of vellowcorn. the straight rows of rowan trees in the sunset and the yellow hay that made the German countryside. Probably this woman would hunt out all the rowan trees as well and refuse to eat wheat or rye because that also grew in an enemy country. This is the mentality which goes frantically to church in an hour of "Hacks to the Wall," and believes that an all-loving Divinity will do the rest.

Dare we bring these things into the new clean year that is 1911? Dare we pray for peace unless we do something to deserve peace? Dare we pray to triumph in this struggle for justice unless each one of us in his individual heart is just and charitable and true? Selfishness, individual selfishness and national selfishness, is responsible tor the holocaust, and inasmuch as we have contributed to this great volcano of selfishness which has erupted to-day we are responsible tor the war, and inasmuch as we contribute to the cesspools ot hate we tail to deserve tho world security for which we fight. In the instability which war causes, in the doubt and tear.-mistrust and treachery, let our prayer be for a balanced mind; let our heart's cry in this New Year bo a simple one—"God keep us sane! Middleton Murry's words shall he our inspiration and inasmuch as the last generation failed, we dare not fail. "The generation that is really new must live dangerously, for it must know that social security is henceforward only a phrase and a readymade artistic tradition only a thin excuse for not feeling, not striving, not doing. The future will take care ol itself . . . this generation must take care that it belongs to tho future."