THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Friday, March 23. 1945. ANNIVERSARY DAY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25801, 23 March 1945, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Friday, March 23. 1945. ANNIVERSARY DAY

Ninety-seven years ago to-day, on March 23, 1848, the ship John Wickliffe entered the Otago Harbour, carrying the first 97 colonists to set foot on the chosen site of the Church Settlement of Otago. On April 15 of the same year the Philip Laing, with 247 passengers, berthed alongside the John Wickliffe at Port Chalmers. The history of Otago as a British settlement colony had commenced. The celebration of the anniversary of the first arrival will cause many old identities to turn their thoughts back to the early days and, while none can recollect personally the decade of careful planning which preceded the establishment of the settlement or the first landings at Port Chalmers, there are still some who will think of youthful years spent in the developing stage of the province and in the epoch-making gold era of 1860-80. The formation of Otago as a Scottish settlement was not an isolated incident of a departed era, but was the particular manner in which the Free Churchmen of Scotland interpreted the great colonising impulse of the early nineteenth century. It is just 100 years since the Otago Association was formed in Glasgow for the purpose of founding a Scottish settlement in the Otago district of New Zealand, and just 100 years ago Captain William Cargill, a London banker who had served his time with the 74th Highlanders, conceived the idea of setting up in New Zealand a settlement which wouid embody the traditional Scottish principles of religion and education. That Captain Cargill’s ideals were kept constantly in view is evidenced in the ultimate history of the province, even during the gold-rush years when a cosmopolitan community threatened to undermine the principles by which the original population was actuated. As another anniversary is celebrated, C’tago stands on the brink of a new era no less portentous than that of the prosperous gold days. The early church settlement, the decades of gold-fever, and the subsequent period of consolidation have passed away and Otago now awaits the onset of the fourth phase, that of continuing the development which two world wars have retarded. If it is to be admitted that there is no longer abroad that pioneering instinct which permeated the adventurous and liberty-seeking spirit of England, Scotland and Ireland a hundred years ago, then it is also to be admitted that the conditions of the future will require a different stamp of courage and a different quality of endurance from that expressed by those whom to-day we honour. An anniversary is an occasion to look back and pay tribute to those who have led us to our present status, but it is also an occasion to review the past with the specific object of gaining wisdom for the coming era. The problems of the post-war period are many, and their forms as yet but dimly outlined. While the theories and the programmes of new creeds may captivate the imagination of a new generation, the evidence of Otago’s past 97 years suggests that one of the greatest hopes of the future rests in the perpetuation of those qualities of character which the pioneer settlers displayed in their foresight, their love of education, their deep faith in the religious aspects of human life, and their calm determination to make worthy of British traditions that small portion of the Empire which they came to create by the sweat of their own brows.

BACKS TO THE RHINE The news of the dramatic Allied thrusts through the Saar basin to the Rhine is of tremendous significance. The clearing of the Saar-Moselle-Rhine triangle of the enemy will give the Allies control of the west bank of the Rhine virtually from the Belfort gap to the Dutch border. That, involving the complete destruction of the outlying Siegfried defence system, has necessarily been General Eisenhower’s main objective, preliminary to the climacteric stage of the war when the armies under his command will begin the pursuit of the Wehrmacht across the river into the inner fortress of the Reich. In this plan the unexpected seizure of the Remagen bridgehead was ahead of the timetable, although, by interfering with the enemy’s supply organisation it must necessarily have contributed very considerably to the weakening of his positions on the west bank and added new hazards to his fighting withdrawal from the salient created in the abortive drive towards the Meuse. The Germans, those 40,000 or 50,000 of them who are believed to be left in the Rhine pockets between Mainz and Bingen and between Mainz and Ludwigshafen, are literally resisting now with their backs to the river. It is unlikely that their stand can be prolonged. Few, if any, of the escape bridges remain, and air attack in appalling weight is taking a toll, in casualties and transport, at least comparable with that of the armour and mobile artillery of the racing American Third and Seventh Armies. There is unanimity among the correspondents on the field that the last phase of the campaign west of the Rhine is in progress. There is also, as was to be expected, excited speculation as to the timing of the supreme operation that is designed to force the river and carry the war into German home territory. It seems reasonably certain that the mass crossings, when they are attempted, will be by means of assault craft in the wider reaches—in the British sector at Wesel, for example, where the width is over a thousand yards—and by use of the. Bailey bridge in the narrower stretches, as near Coblenz, where the span is reduced to about four hundred yards. Perhaps bridges and assault craft will be used together, under air cover and after the air-borne divisions have secured the first holdings on the bomb-blasted eastern banks. On the Lower Rhine, where Field-marshal Montgomery’s armies are awaiting the signal to move, a likely chance is that the attempt to leap the river will not await consolidation in the Saar, but will synchronise with the blow which Marshal Zhukov is poised to deliver across the Oder on the Berlin-Stettin line. The German News Agency has itself issued the warning that a new Allied offensive is imminent. That is certainly the key-note of conjecture in London and among the correspondents at Supreme Headquarters.