THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, JUNE 19, 1942 UNITED NATIONS DAY

New Zealand Herald, Volume 79, Issue 24304, 19 June 1942, Page 2

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, JUNE 19, 1942 UNITED NATIONS DAY

The citizens of Auckland yesterday saw all the panoply of war. Their hearts wanned to the sound of inarching feet, to the rumble of tanks and to the roar of aeroplanes overhead. It was a time of enthusiasm for all the men —and the women—pledged to the defence of our shores. It was a time of solemn pride in the evidence of our preparations against the enemy. But beyond all there was a feeling of profound humility in the presence of so many young men and women ready with a smile to face the enemy. This was a parade the like of which has never been seen in our city. Symbol of the United Nations, representative of our kinsfolk, stood Vice-Admiral Ghormley to take the salute. There was not a heart in all the multitude of onlookers which did not throb with pride and gratitude that the might of the United States of America is pledged to the defence of this Dominion. There were our sailors, members of the Royal Navy, which keeps vigil day and night on the high seas and protects the long sea lanes leading from the homes of her children to the Motherland. There were our soldiers, whose friends and brothers have already fought so bravely for our country in the mountains of Greece and Crete and on the burning sands of Libya. There were our airmen, whose comrades have won imperishable renown in mortal and victorious combat with the Luftwaffe. And there were our young womenfolk, whose martial bearing was an inspiration. Auckland realised yesterday that it was part of a nation in arms; not a complacent nation, for much remains to be clone —and to be suffered, but a nation whose hand is set to the task and whose purpose will not. falter. This is a fortunate country. No part of its pleasant countryside has suffered yet the ravages of war. We have not undergone the ordeal by fire visited upon the people of the United Kingdom. Much less do wo know the awful sufferings of the peoples of Poland, Norway, Holland, Belgium, France and Czechoslovakia. Those who stood in Queen Street free men and women, with laughing children by their side, will turn their minds to the nations who first fell before the invader —the Poles and the Czechs. Thousands of Poles are slaves in Germany. Their learned men have been shot, or, where fate has not been so kind, they have been beaten in concentration camps. Thousands of their womenfolk have been degraded. Men have been taken blindfolded to the woods and there have dug their own graves and then have been shot. Because their gaoler, a vile man called Heydrich, has been assassinated, Czechs | —men and women —are being shot daily in batches of ten and twenty. And there is no end to this slaughter. The innocent are dragged from their i homes by the Gestapo to whom ; mercy is a stranger and cruelty a cult. From one end of occupied Europe to the other the Germans have their way. In Norway they pack teachers into open cattle-trucks and send them to the ports, whence they go, sick and suffering, to concentration camps in the frozen north. In Denmark they send schoolboys to prison for daring to speak in praise of Churchill. In France they shoot innocent hostages—even boys—and label them Communists. In the towns of Yugoslavia they hang men and women in the streets and leave them there to terrorise the populace. Yet all these dreadful things—for which there will be retribution —have not cowed the conquered nations. Many of their men flee to Great Britain and join her armies or form armies of their own. Thousands of the occupied people undermine the rule of their conquerors. The Yugoslavs still fight in organised bands. Behind the German lines in occupied Russia the guerillas wage implacable war. The Chinese are unconquerable. We do well in this remote anc favoured land to ponder on tin sufferings of so many of our Allies and to realise what we are struggling to avert. That long line of fighting men and instruments of war seen yes terday in our streets is but a tin;; fraction of the effort of the Unitec Nations. But it was a potent symbol It represented the spirit of the com mon men and women of all countriei fighting to preserve the elementa decencies. On the one side are ths nations which say brutally anc blatantly that they are the master folk, ordained by some god of theii own creation to rule the world for their own benefit. On the other arc the plain people who hate war, who wish to live in simplicity and happiness with their fellow-men, who desire to share with all the right to work and to economic security. If this war were lost these simple aspirations, great because they are simple, would be crushed for cen turies. Those proud young faces ol yesterday hold the future of the common man : theirs will be victory.