SALUTE THE MERCHANT NAVY

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 25084, 23 December 1944, Page 2

SALUTE THE MERCHANT NAVY

By KOTARE

WE are all bound up in the bundle of life together. No man lives unto himself. That is true of humanity in peace time ; but the full understanding of it comes fully home only in days of wai. And Christmas, the season of gifts, the time that specially commemorates the greatest gift of all, has failed sadly in its chief purpose if we do not pass in review the debts we owe to the labours and sufferings and sacrifices of other people. When Mr Churchill sent ringing down the years and around the world his tribute to the men who had fought and won the Battle of Britain—"Never has km much been owed bv so many to so lew"—he embodied in one magic sentence a nation's eternal gratitude to the handful of heroic young inen who held the gateways of the air in the most critical moment of our long history. Since then our debt to the myriads of men and women of all the Allied Nations has mounted till it fills the whole arch of the heavens. That it has long passed all human power of assessment should not lead us to take it all for granted, as if it were in some way our natural right that men and women should toil and endure hardship and pour out their lives for our sakes. Through the Night After the darkest, grimmest hours in human history victory stands a-tiptoe on the hills. What wo have done ourselves for the march of humanity through the night toward the dawn is a matter for our own consciences. There will be few whom circumstances have confined to the ordinary activities of their normal lives that will he wholly satisfied with their contribution. But at least they can remember at Christ-mas-time what others have done. Our liberties must mean more to us now they have been consecrated by the blood of millions of men. Who are we that we should owe so much to so many? Christmas has little meaning to us if we do not bow our heads in humble gratitude for the multitudes of all races who have preserved Christmas and all it represents for mankind. We see the mighty company pass by. The soldiers, the sailors, the airmen, the leaders and the toilers on the home front, the women and the children who have sent their men into battle—a moving panorama of courage and effort and devotion. They have all had their i part in giving us a Christmas where j Santa Claus can still ride forth to delight our children, and beach and valley and hill can summon sun-worshippers as of old. Gallant Company Among that great crowd of benefactors we can single out for special remembrance today the men of the Merchant Navy, the gallant company that day in, day out, without fuss and too qften without praise, goes forth on its lawful occasions under conditions of never-ceasing danger, with the horrors of relentless war added to the harsh discipline the sea always imposes. No service is more essential to the successful prosecution of the war. If the convoys had not gone through all the valour and skill of our fighting services would have failed us in the end. Our destiny ultimately is on the sea. The Liner is a lady, but if she wasn't made There still would he the cargo-boats for 'ome and foreign trade. The man-o'-war's 'er 'usband, but if we wasn t 'ere 'E wouldn't 'ave to fight at all for 'ome an friends so dear. The Navy holds the sea-lanes that the cargo ships may pass. The Navy has held the lanes, and the merchant ships have got through in sufficient numbers to decide the issue of the war. "Swift shuttles of an Empire's loom" Kipling calls the vast and varied fleet sailing under the Red Duster. In their comings and goings is not only ouh 1 health but our very life. The salt-en-crusted, storm-battered shapes that steal unheralded into and out of our harbours, the hard-bitten men that

bring them in and turn round almost over-night to take them out again, they are the very foundations of our continued existence as a world-wide Commonwealth of free peoples. There is no discharge in their war One voyage ended means another begun. Nowhere else is the tough, dour, adventuring courage of our race, moulded and shaped by the sea, more finely exemplified. A recent book written by an old captain of th'e Merchant Service to protest against the neglect of his comrades which has been the common public attitude, tells the story of a typical voyage by one ship on the homeward run. In the Indian Ocean she fought off a determined attack by a powerful Japan-

ese commerce-raider. Then for days she fought an even more dangerous enemy in a storm of unprecedented viciousaass. Hardly had she recovered from her second wounds than she had to face a gunfire and torpedo attack from a U-boat. A little further on a second U-boat repeated the dose. And 'before she made port she Was bombed from the air. Not every voyage met hazards on that scale, but the possibility of them was always there. And the unassuming men that brought the ship in, after a fewdays in port were off to face them all again. All honour to all the men that fight for us; and this Christmas a special salute to all merchant adventurers.