TWO YEARS OF WAR

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 63, Issue 4473, 5 September 1941, Page 5

TWO YEARS OF WAR

A CONFLICT WORLD-WIDE IN ITS RAMIFICATIONS.

THE KING’S CALL TO A NATIONAL DAY OF BRAYER.

The second anniversary of the declaration of the present war fell on Wednesday. On the first anniversary of the outbreak of war the Battle of Britain was still raging over the- southern counties. With the loss of that battle Hitler’s hopes of invading the British Isles vanished, and instead, since then he has had to face ever-increasing offensives by the Royal Air Force. On this, the second anniversary, we can watch the mounting British strength and the willing aid lent by America. But it also emphasised Zif&X for Great Britain the entry of Russia into the war has simplified many problems, military and diplomatic. The problem of how military defeat can be inflicted on Germany—a problem to which there has been no obvious solution since the fail of France—is now solved if Russia can be kept in the war till next spring. The meeting of British and Russian troops in Iran on the Second anniversary of the beginning of the war may well be a turning point in world history.

AFTER TWO YEARS

THE CALL TO PRAYER.

At dawn on September 1, 1939, German troops began to invade Poland, no ultimatum or declaration having been given. On the next day the Italian Government, which had previously approached Great Britain ana France with a suggestion for a FivePower Conference, but envisaging the surrender of Danzig to Germany as a preliminary, made another proposal for parley. It was replied that no discussion could be held while the Nazis were attacking Poland; and on September 3 an ultimatum was sent to Berlin stating that Great Britain and France would be at war with Germany in fulfilment of the pledges given to Poland unless an undertaking was received that German troops would be withdrawal from Polish territory. No reply was received, and ar. 11.15 a.m. on that day, Sunday, the British Prime Minister declared a state of war to exist. The effect on men’s minds of that announcement was perhaps numbing; but there w’as no shock of surprise. The British peoples, and the French, had for long been prepared to accept conflict with the Reich of Herr Hitler as inevitable. One way only of avoiding it—or of delaying it until he was ready to attack in the West—existed. The German remilitarisation of the Rhineland, in 1936, the occupation and annexation of Austria, in 1938, the rape of Czechoslovakia, in 1939, in breach of the Munich Agreement, had in successive stages shown that the only tolerance required by Hen- Hitler of his neighbours was acceptance of his aggressions'. When the Allies determined to overlook no further hostile acts by Nazi Germany against the European nations, the end of an era of uneasy peace was fixed. The question that may well be asked, on the second anniversary of the act which precipitated this war, is whether Hitler’s adversaries would still have moved against him had they been able to foresee the terrible events of these two years. Those who believe in democracy—in the right of men and of nations to determine their way of life—can make but one answer to that question. Great and devastating as has been the struggle, cruel beyond computation as the losses have already been, grim as the future looms, there could be but one reply to Germany when the invasion of Poland w*as begun. World domination was, and still is, the vision before Nazi eyes. There is no way of shattering that evil dream save in the clash of arms. As the third year of this world war opens, the people of the democratic world can look ahead with their confidence in the rightness of their cause, and its ultimate triumph, not shaken but confirmed in old sorrow’s and past disasters. They are stronger to-day than when the battle commenced. Despite defections bitterly suffered, they are more united, and in a truer understanding of the final issues. If France lies fallen and bleeding, the United States of America stand at the side of Great Britain and her Allies. If some of the small and gallant defenders of freedom are stricken, the might of the greatest State neighbouring Hitler’s Europe, Russia, is pitted against the Nazi hordes, baffling and weakening them. And Great Britain herself, the nations of the British Empire, far from becoming spent in the cause of democracy, maintain their lands intact, their spirit firm and resolute. They are ready still to strike, to endure, and to conquer, in a combat which is of such tremendous significance in destiny of men that failure is unthinkable. EPITAPH FOR AN AIRMAN. The following poem by George Nichols first appeared in Chambers’ Journal. It is re-printed here from “ Parade, an English Digest”:— The shouting wind shall be his requiem, The falling star his lofty monument; No earth-bound pangs can honour add to them (Who seek their honours in the firmament.

His Majesty the King has requested us to pray for victory and a just and lasting peace; to observe Sunday next as a National Day of Prayer. Never has the Empire faced such danger as it now does. Never have all the principles of law and liberty been threatened by an adversary so brutal and unscrupulous, so lost to all sense of decency and humanity, so resolutely determined, at whatever cost of human suffering both in his own and in other countries to work his malignant will even on peace-loving and inoffensive neighbours whom the wildest flight of fancy could not regard as m ,any sense a danger to anyone, and whose sole desire was to live and let live. We and our Allies are the world’s only bulwark against a barbarism as dark and brutal as when the savage hordes from beyond the Rhine overthrew the Roman Empire and overan Southern Europe and North Africa—a barbarism ten thousandfold more powerfully organised for destruction. All earnest-<minded and thoughtful men and women are fully alive to the gravity of the situation. They realise that, far removed as we are from the contending armies, unless the Allied cause prevails not only, our homes and our possessions, but the principles and ideals which are the bases of our whole civilisation, are irretrievably lost. Thus, wherever our Throne and Empire are held in honour the response to His Majesty’s request cannot be other than whole-hearted and spontaneous. All the churches are at one, because they are all firmly convinced that the Allied cause is the cause of our common Christianity. Many who pra*- but seldom will be with the churches in spirit, because they feel in their inmost being that in God alone is our hope and confidence. They know also that there is no prospect of a peace that will be either just or lasting without a decisive Allied victory. Students of history know only too well that a peace imposed by the enemy would be as just, as merciful as the Germans’ treatment of the countries they wantonly invade in defiance of their own pledged word, and of the defenceless non-combatants, women, and children whom they drive starving and halfnaked from their ruined homes, to die of hunger by the road-side or by machine-gun fire from G crania n aeroplanes. In these anxious days w T e are all heartened not only by the steadfast courage and determination of the nation’s leaders in Great Britain, and by the bravery of our forces by land and sea and in the air, and the wonderful unity and the spirit of selfsacrifice which pervades all classes and nerves them for whatever may be in store. Placing our confidence in God, we cling strongly to the conviction that the principles for which we are fighting must assuredly prevail in the end. But the victory in this present struggle will be withheld from us unless we prove ourselves worthy of it.

It would be blasphemous to pray for victory unless we were firmly persuaded of the righteousness of our cause. By our National Day of Prayer we should not expect to constrain God to do our will. But we should thank Him for all the blessings and privileges of our British citizenship which we have so often taken as a matter of course, and ask Him to enlighten our minds, so that we may see more clearly what is at stake in the present emergency and what duties and responsibilities are incumbent upon each one of us. We should ask Him to make us more patient under discipline, and more sympathetic to the perplexities and difficulties of those who are carrying a heavier load of responsibility than we ourselves are, but yet are doing their utmost for the cause which lies so close to the heart of every clearsighted, loyal man and woman in our midst. We should ask for strength and courage to restrain the evil-doer, without vindictiveness, yet resolutely and as a matter of duty, that the law of righteousness may be vindicated between nation and nation and that confidence in the pledged word, without which there can be no security in international relations, may be restored. There is no special Christian virtue about a New Zealand sentimentalist who is quite ready to forgive the Germans for their cruel and unprincipled ravaging of country after country, and all their other crimes against the law of God and man. The sooner the sentimentalists realise that much the better for all concerned. We should pray, also, for our rulers and our forces by land and sea and in the air, that they may be clear in vision, steadfast in action, resolute, courageous, and resourceful, that the Divine protection may be over them in all their arduous tasks, and that their courage and devotion may issue in a speedy and decisive victory.

The light of dawn shall be his votive flame, The purple cloud of dusk his canopy; Who lived and died w’ith dusk and dawn may claim No lower tribute than this panoply.

His guiding stars shall now’ his bearers Yj In muvc. procession through the mouri.mg skies— Partaker now of that high mystery He* could not share till death had made him wise.

Something like this, it may be believed, was in His Majesty’s mind when he asked the churches to unite in prayer and intercession. Such an act of corporate worship, encircling the whole world, helps to align our wills with the Divine will, does something to purify our war aims from all that is unworthy, nerves us for still greater- energy of purpose, brings home to all of us the magnitude of our present danger, and unites us more closely with all our fellow citizens and with our brave Allies in our devotion to a great cause. May God defend the right !