The New Zealand Herald AUCKLAND, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1944 FIFTH AND SIXTH FREEDOMS

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 25084, 23 December 1944, Page 6

The New Zealand Herald AUCKLAND, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1944 FIFTH AND SIXTH FREEDOMS

December weather, breaking the records this year for perversity, gave no early promise of an "old-time Christmas." The cynics are tempted to wonder whether the famous Christmas of cloudless skies and burning sands ever really was. They scan the pages back to Tasman and to Cook and find virgin bush, untrodden range and Maori pa wrapped in familiar rain. The pakeha has not changed the weather for all the folly of his axe and fire. Even the canoes from Hawaiki found "a long white cloud." Perhaps the stickler for historic truth should trace the wistful tradition of perfect Christmas weather back to the optimism of pioneers and braver days, and to the enthusiasms of childhood which shape the dreams of later years. There are more solid facts about the old-time Christmas which will compensate for such disillusionment. It was the symbol, after all, of freedom. Or perhaps it should be said, since the Atlantic Charter taught the world to use the word in the plural, that Christmas stands for all the freedoms. They numbered four. A fifth might be added and a sixth. The freedom of the road is the fifth freedom. Christmas once meant holiday and boundless liberty to go where one would. No anxious queues of would-be travellers wondered who really was to blame for fewer trains and painful journeying. No motorist begged coupons | and drove warily on worn-out tyres. Xo Japanese in Java and Malaya sat on the world's rubber, no churning tanks in the Rhineland mud drank the petrol of countless holidays. The citizen had the freedom of the road. When the war is won it must, like open parklands, be fully given back again. There is health and refreshment in change of scene, and highroad and railroad must be freed from all handicaps and impositions which limit their full use and usefulness. A vast roading and railway programme will be part of the country's reconstruction. With it must go, as a right of democracy, cheap and comfortable trains, cheap and abundant petrol, and ready transport in all its forms. Such facilities accompany the right to holiday, and that right, at this happy end of the Empire, has remained inviolate in the midst of total war. No one grudges honest work a wellearned wage or a well-earned holiday, but the subject raises echoes of another old-time Christmas. "And yet." said Scrooge, "you don't think , me ill-treated when I pay a day's wages for no work." The clerk observed that it was only once a year. "A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every 25th of December !" said Scrooge buttoning his greatcoat to his chin. "But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning." Out of such a melancholy England, geared not for total war, but for Victorian industry, the colonists of this country came determined to win independence by axe and spade, to be no man's servant, no man's debtor. Their spirit made a determination for social justice part of New Zealand's heritage. It would be a pity if their other virtues were to be forgotten. But Scrooge had, when his own heart at last moved him, and Bob Cratchit had to the extent of an amazingly elastic fifteen shillings a week, the sixth freedom. It is the freedom of the table. To eat well at Christmas time is the oldest of traditions. It dates back beyond civilisation. It was on or around the twenty-fifth day of December that priest or Druid was able to announce that the sun was on the move toward the northern spring. Marks on stone and altar proved that the solstice was past, and winter defeated. Casks were breached, and hoarded stores were raided. So began Christmas fare. Christianity took the festival and, for all that Christ was born in October, attached it to the Master's Name. The British people have kept the tradition royally. From Chaucer's England, the England of Elizabeth, and the England of Victoria comes the same tale of groaning tables. "Men whose immediate forebears," writes Arthur Bryant, "had been hale and hearty farmers would think nothing of tackling at a sitting a boiled leg of mutton with carrots, turnips and dumplings, black pudding of pigs' and sheeps' trotters, tripe and faggots and pease pudding." The Forsytes followed the proletariat. At Lord Grey's house Creevey sat down to a luncheon of two hot roast fowls, two partridges, a dish of hot beef steaks and a cold pheasant, and to a "double dinner" of two soups, two fishes, a round of beef, a leg of mutton, a x-oast turkey, with snipe and plover, devilled herring and cream cheese. All of which, damaging maybe to waistline and artery, is apt to make a rationed age nostalgic. Ample food bought cheaply is a democratic right. England has given it up for the duration. In at least token sympathy New Zealand has coupons too. They must not survive the necessity. In a world of peace no unnecessary restriction, no fetish of marketing, must add a penny to the price of Christmas dinner, or deny Christmas breakfast or Christmas tea the fruit or product of any land. Meanwhile none are hungry, and a merry Christmas awaits men's goodwill. ARDENNES BATTLEGROUND The Ardennes of Belgium, France, and the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg are a tactician's nightmare. If he belongs to the out-of-date school which believes an enemy will automatically attack every defended position he will expect to delay progress indefinitely through its wooded heights and valleys, its narrow twisting roads and forest paths, with comparatively few men and some machine-guns. But if the tactician knows the enemy will not bother about his fortified posts unless compelled to, that if a way past them can be found other than by fighting, then he will demand little short of an army to hold the area. Even then he may not feel sure he has guarded every possible approach to front, flanks and rear and that the posts can give each other mutual support,

It is understandable that in this tangled country there should be confusion while the rival forces move hither and thither in search of positions or routes past them. It was in the more southern parts of the Ardennes that in the course of the Battles of the Frontier in 1914 there was fougnt the "battle of the two blind men." Neither the French forces, which had an open order to attack the Germans wherever they might be found, nor the Germans, who were completing their concentration, knew much of the presence of each other until fighting developed. One French division in column came under the German guns but the enemy was also so much in the dark that the victory was not exploited. For the battle of May, 1910, it was thought the natural difficulties of the terrain would retard the advance of Reichenau's gigantic shock army. He had no opposition and in a few days he was upon the Belgians at Liege and the French at Sedan. In this area today Rundstedt's hydra-headed offensive army is thrusting and probing while isolated American units fight on in pockets of resistance. To the natural obscurity of the terrain is added seasonal fog, the curtains of security silence and the alarums and excursions attendant on mobile operations anywhere. OUR MEN OVERSEAS Between today and next Tuesday Xew Zealand will have passed the climax of the year. In thousands of homes which look upon Christmas as a season of holy days as well as of holidays, thoughts will inevitably turn overseas to sons and brothers, uncles and fathers, husbands and sweethearts, serving the nation and all it stands for—"thoughts do often lie too deep for tears." They will feel a suggestion of selfishness in Yuletide merriment while their menfolk battle with the foe on sea and land and in the air. But that is not to the mind of the men who are doing the noblest work of all. To them Christmas is the time when thoughts of home are very personal, something sacred to be shared only with the great comrades of the front line. Thoughts of the nation at war and of all the tremendous issues involved take second place to memories of the little ones to whom Santa Clans is a reality, of the gift they would like to make to wife or sweetheart, of the family gathering about the Christmas table. Friends and relatives at home may rest assured that their kinsfolk of the armed services, which include, in these years the valiant merchant marine, are envious only to the extent of a real longing to be with them. For solace they call on knowledge of a job that is worth the doing, of the things in our way of life which must be preserved. On nur side, in this Christmas of 1944, those of us at home will remember at Communion, at Mass, or in Yuletide toast the men overseas with the prayer: "Good luck. God bp with you and a safe return to your own land,"