THE KING SPEAKS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 305, 26 December 1944, Page 5

THE KING SPEAKS

CHRISTMAS MESSAGE

Proud And Grateful Thoughts Of Fighting Men British Official Wireless Rec. 2 p.m. RUGBY, Dec. 25. The King, in his Christina's Daybroadcast on Monday afternoon, said: "Once more, on Christmas Day, I speak to the millions of you scattered far and near across the world. As always, I am greatly moved by the thought that so vast and friendly an audience hears the words I speak in this room, where the Queen and I and our daughters are fortunate enough to be spending Christmas at home. "I count it a high privilege to be able to use these moments to send a Christmas message of goodwill to the men and women of whatever creed or colour who may be listening to me throughout the Commonwealth and Empire, on the battlefield, on the high seas, or in foreign lands. , . "At this Christmas time we think proudly and gratefully of our fighting men wherever they may be. May God bless and protect them and bring them victory/ Our message goes to all who are wounded or sick in hospital, and to the doctors and nurses in their labours of mercy. And our thoughts and prayers are also with our men who are prisoners of war and with their relatives in their loneliness and anxiety. Message to Children "To children everywhere we wish all the happiness this Christmas can bring. Among the deepest sorrows we have felt in these years of strife, and the one we feel most is the grief of separation—families rent apart by the call of service, people sundered from people by calamities that have overwhelmed some, while others have been free to continue the fight.

"We have rejoiced in the victories of this year, not least because they have broken down some of the barriers between us and our friends, and brought nearer the time when we can all be together again with those we love. "For the moment we have a foretaste of that joy as we enter into the fellowship of Christmas Day. At this great festival more perhaps than at any other season of the year we long for a new birth of freedom and order among all the nations, so that happiness and concord may pervail and the scourge of war may be banished from our midst. "Yet though human ingenuity can show us no short cut. to that universal charity which is the very heart of the Christmas message, the goal is still clear before us, and I for one believe thdt these years of sacrifice and sorrow have brought us nearer to it. "We" do not know what awaits us when we open the door of 1945, but if we look back to those earlier Christmas days of the war we can surely say that the darkness daily grows less and less. The lamps which Germans put out all over Europe, first in 1914 and then in 1939, are being slowly rekindled. Already we see some of them beginning to shine through the fog of war that still shrouds so many lands.

Confidence Replacing Anxiety "Anxiety is giving way to confidence and let us hope that before next Christmas Day, God willing,, the story of liberation and triumph will be complete. "Throughout the Empire, men and women and boys and girls, through hard work and much self-sacrifice, have all helped to bring victory nearer. We have shared many dangers and common effort has bound us together. Yet labour, devotion, patience and tolerance will still be needed for the experiment of living as nations together in harmony. . "The defeat of Germany and Japan is only the first half of our task. The second is to create a world of free men, untouched .by tyranny. We have great Allies in this arduous enterprise of the human spirit— man's 'unconquerable mind and freedom's holy flame.' I believe most surely that we shall achieve that "In the meantime, in the old words that never lose their force, I wish you from my heart a happy Christmas and for the coming year a full measure of that courage and faith in God which alone enables us to bear old sorrows and face new trials until the day when the Christmas messa ge—peace on earth goodwill towards man—finally comes true.' The King made his broadcast from a house in the country. For the first time the Queen and the two Princesses were in the same room to . hear the King deliver his Christmas message. The King's last broadcast was to the Home Guard on December 3, and before that he spoke to the Empire on the evening of D day.