NOTES AND COMMENTS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 288, 17 September 1941, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

DEFENCE OF GIBRALTAR. Any attempt by an enemy to seize. Gibraltar is most unlikely to succeed, asserts tbe “Scotsman.” If the Germans, with or without Spanish permission and connivance, were to seek to reduce Gibraltar, it is improbable that they would endeavour to do so by attacking the Rock itself. It would be sufficient for their purpose if they could neutralise its value, and wrest from us the command of the Strait. If they could prevent our ships from entering or leaving the Mediterranean at this western extremity their aim would be achieved. How might this be accomplished? If the enemy obtained possession of Spanish territory round about Algeciras Bay, and mounted heavy guns there, he might be able to make the naval base untenable, and if he also held Spanish Morocco and Tangier he could mount guns on tlie other side of the Strait and make it rather dangerous for our ships to pass through, unless under cover of darkness. But the Rock itself would by no means play a passive part in such operations, and the enemy might find himself under continual and concentrated fire, and might also be exposed to attack by sea and land. That he could ever drive us out of our stronghold is most unlikely. Gibraltar should -be able not only to stand a long siege, -but also to hit back at its assailants.

, PRACTICE BEFORE PRECEPT. “We British have a great Christian tradition, our laws and institutions rest ultimately upon a Christian basis, ’and the things about which we have a fundamental concern and for which we 'are now engaged in a life and death struggle—freedom and justice, good faith and goodwill, all the decencies, as we call them, between man and man and nation and nation —all these things derive ultimately from a deep belief in the divine government of the world and all men’s value in God’s said the Bishop of Lichfield, Dr. Woods, in an address to undergraduates of Cambridge University. “None would surely deny that our main object in this titanic struggle is to establish for Europe and the world an order very different from Hitler’s, in which freedom and righteousness on an international scale could at last have some chance to grow and flourish; but I am persuaded that the best hope of our showing to men what kind of new world we desire to establish is not in the first instance by sketching out blue prints of a federal union, a revised League of Nations and so on, but by actually putting into practice here and now in our own community-life a sample of the contented human society which we would fain see established everywhere. When we only talk about these things, other nations will continue to see us rather hypocritical; when they see us actually doing them, reconstructing our own national life on these better lines, then and then only will they really take notice and perhaps feel impelled to work with us for a new order in the world.”