The Southland Times WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24. 1940. Anzac Day in War Time

Southland Times, Issue 24109, 24 April 1940, Page 4

The Southland Times WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24. 1940. Anzac Day in War Time

DURING the past few years Anzac Day has been touched by the shadow of an approaching storm. Tomorrow, when parades and memorial services are held in all parts of New Zealand, the dominant mood will be an awareness of the tragedy which could not be averted. No one will seek to minimize the present ordeal, or attempt to discover glory in the work that has been taken up by the British Commonwealth and its Allies. For more than two decades Anzac Day has symbolized in this Dominion and in Australia the sacrifice and the sufferings of war. There has been no recognition or approval of a militaristic outlook. Veterans who marched in the streets, and the silent crowds that watched them, have shared one strong hope: that it would not again be necessary for young men to fight on foreign battlefields. This hope must now be put aside, although not without sorrow, and perhaps with an impulse of passionate protest. The difficulty of turning away from the habits of peace and the outlook that accompanies them has been exemplified in the reluctance of many thousands of eligible men to enlist. It should be easier to understand their slowness on a day that has been devoted so often to the expression of a nation’s will to peace. Young men whose minds have been formed in the years of post-war disillusionment cannot be expected to enter the struggle without first adapting themselves to a changing mental climate. But the days of readjustment are nearing their limit. The message of Anzac Day is not merely a plea for peace: it is also a summons to service.

The Defence of Freedom

New Zealanders who fought in 1914-18 may or may not have believed they were fighting a war to end war. But they were certainly fighting to defeat an enemy whose imperialist dream had become a threat to British peoples. That dream was not shattered; it was driven underground, and now that it is once again troubling the civilized world it has been darkened with a new terror, and has advanced nearer to the barbarism which seems to attract the German race in its times of spiritual regression. In the 26 years since 1914 there has been a steady depreciation of values. Under the stress of war it was not long before German “frightfulness” became a legend and a challenge. But in 1914 there were no concentration camps, no savage persecution of Jews and political minorities, no deliberate and coldblooded destruction of small and independent States. There are shameful and criminal facts in the world today which would have roused a younger generation to an immediate and stern response. This is no war that came suddenly, and for no obvious reason. It is a war that grew, stage by stage, with all the world watching the tragic process. The evils that are to be crushed are evils which would not allow the continued existence of small nations like New Zealand. They are evils that deny all the values and privileges of which men think when they think wistfully of peace. The time has come when peace and freedom must be reaffirmed, not in words and sentiment, but in the example of action. For it is a truth proven in history that peace and freedom cannot be preserved unless men are willing, in critical times, to defend them in arms. There are some persons who would say, and are saying today in New Zealand, that if these precious values must be bought so dearly they are no longer worth the buying. But that is the mood of those who accept bondage. It is not the mood of the returned soldiers who will march again in tomorrow’s parades, or of their comrades who died on Gallipoli and in Flanders.