BRUTALISING EFFECT

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVI, Issue 22935, 4 July 1944, Page 5

BRUTALISING EFFECT

War Conditions In Pacific From the Official War Correspondent with the N.Z.E.F. NEW CALEDONIA, June 26. “One of the things I have had very much in mind is the brutalising effect of the war in this area.” said MajorGeneral Barrowclough, speaking at a luncheon of Y.M.C.A. secretaries. “I have never met it in the last war or in the Middle East in this war; but we have come up against it in this theatre. There is a regard for human life which exists in chivalrous warriors but which does not exist here. We do not call the tune, but we have to dance to it if we are to win. “At the present time you have a unique opportunity to render snecial service to the troops. I cannot, give them much in the way of work because I do not know what is going to happen. Now I challenge you to do something more for the troops and to take up this opportunity." General Barrowclough said that the conditions of living in the jungle were trying in the extreme, so that people became, in a number of wavs, careless in their way of living. That was what we are extremely anxious to correct, and the one organisation to do it was the Y.M.C.A., which had had opportunity to do more for the troops than it had ever done before