There was a lad born into a tight but scattered depression-frozen community where longdrops were the norm and a septic tank the height of modernity. He had never seen a telephone and knew nothing of domestic fridges, washing machines, or in fact, of any other electrical appliances. Paved roads and footpaths were no part of his experience. Two wooden clothes pegs clipped together made an aeroplane something that he had yet to see although he knew that they went ‘brmmmmmm’. His was a comfortable world. He was happy and contented.
His mother like every other mother made the weekday trek to distant shops for perishables and every mother meeting another mother coming or going would stop for a brief chat. It was the polite thing to do. Everyone knew everyone else in the district and almost everything about everyone else. It was not a convenient world but it was a close and safe world. His mother, who already had two younger children, could send him, at age four, the mile to the shops if anything prevented her from going.
He was vaugely aware that there were problems in the world outside Glen Eden. There were some naughty people called Germans who lived ‘over the water’. That could only mean Devonport or Takapuna. He had been to both places but, fortunately, not encountered them.
Very soon some of the people that he knew would be fighting against those Germans and their evil sorceror and the world would quickly become much larger than he had previously envisaged. As a gullible lad he soaked up all the hype that is part of war. We were not just fighting the Germans and later the Japanese but fighting to make our world a better place. Mankind would, in Churchill’s words, move on to ‘broad and sunlit uplands.’
The United Nations Organisation seemed to be a move in that direction. It would not sink into futility as the League of Nations did. Its building is still in Manhatten Borough with its inmates peacefully asleep at their desks. Although perhaps not everyone. Someone must put those flags out.