KNITTING FOR SOLDIERS

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21137, 12 June 1940, Page 6

KNITTING FOR SOLDIERS

Though he probably had no desire to dampen the patriotic fervour of the thousands of women in New Zealand who are performing a labour of love on behalf of the men at the front, Mr A. F. Moncur’s criticism of the knitting of comforts for soldiers as a “waste of effort” was unfortunate. Everyone will agree that much more might be done by the employment of scientific methods, but unless and until the new methods are made available, the women of New Zealand should not have been discouraged in their good work. The result might easily be a temporary diminution in the number of comforts available for despatch to the overseas forces. Mr Moncur made his statement when opening the Address-in-Reply debate in the House of Representatives and thus gave the criticism more apparent authority than it should have had. The Government itself has very properly appealed to the public for the comforts that go to make the soldier’s life a little less rigorous. It certainly might have gone further and endeavoured to make knitting machines available so that all the woollen garments required could have been made in much shorter time and with less expenditure of effort. But those machines are not available to the average women in her home, and nothing should be done to discourage her from devoting her spare time to hand-knitting.

It would have been better had Mr Moncur quietly persuaded the Government to make machines available and then to encourage the women to make use of them, thus increasing the supply of comforts a hundredfold. Or the Government might have organised the woollen industry so that all the garments the soldiers could use would be made available promptly. However, it is fortunate that the women will continue to knit in their spare time, and the soldiers will appreciate their efforts. It is even possible that Mr Moncur’s statement will cause them to seek ways and means of performing by such machines as they can obtain the work which, though slow and laborious, has nevertheless been undertaken in a true patriotic spirit and with a very real solicitude for the men who are suffering hardships at the fighting fronts.