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Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 164, 14 July 1941, Page 8

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DOMINION POSTS

MR. CHURCHILL'S WISDOM

The wisdom of Mr. Winston Churchill's policy of sending men of Ministerial rank to the Dominions as representatives of the British Government was praised by the acting-Prime Minister, the Hon. Walter Nash, at the State dinner to Sir Ronald Cross, newly appointed British High Commissioner to Australia, on Saturday night. The result of that policy had been the sending of Mr. Malcolm Mac Donald, former Dominions Secretary, to Canada, and Sir Ronald to Australia.

It was to the advantage of those two countries and also to the other Dominions. It was important that those representatives, and also Sir Stafford Cripps, Ambassador to Russia, still retained their seats in the British House of Commons. They thus carried out their present appointments, while still retaining their interest in the Government of Britain.

Mr. Nash spoke eulogistically of the career of Sir Ronald who, elected as a Conservative member of the House in 1931 when Mr. Stanley Baldwin led his Government in a landslide victory, had held his seat, an industrial, Lancashire one, ever since. In 1938, after serving his apprenticeship in lesser roles, Sir Ronald had been appointed to the Board of Trade under Mr. Oliver Stanley.

When the Ministry of Economic Warfare was brought into being—a Ministry whose work, in the ulti mate, would be the largest factor of all factors in the success or other wise of our efforts in the presen conflict, Sir Ronald was given the ask of laying its foundations. In th. lew National Government formed bv Mr. Churchill, Sir Ronald gave way to Dr. Hugh Dalton, being given instead the Ministry of Snipping From the Dominion point of view nothing was so important as the work of that Ministry. Three most potent weapons being ised against the enemy were centred in the Ministries of Economic Warfare and Shipping and in the blockade being so magnificently carried out by the navy. The pressure was already being felt by the enemy. The thrust by Germany against Russia was undertaken by Germany, not only because of her desire for world domination, but also because of her material need of oil and food—a need imposed by the operation of those three factors in the British attack.

"We are in the hardest conflict that the world has known," said Mr Nash. "We still have some anxiour times ahead of us." The clouds may appear blacker than they have during the past twenty months, but he believed that right would conquer. We had never been more in the right than in this conflict. It was a con flict that would be resolved when either Germany defeated Britain in Britain, or when Germany wa~ beaten in Germany. He was confident that Britain, with the material resources of the United States behind her, would triumph.