ENDURE TO END

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 13111, 1 April 1943, Page 7

ENDURE TO END

SPIRIT OF BRITAIN

Welsh Playwright's Message

Women In Industry

San Francisco, March. 14

The United States has been for months struggling to solve the problem of manpower but it remained for a Welsh playwright, author and orator, Mr. Jack Jones, to tell Americans that Britain had emerged from that difficulty with women joining willingly i n supplying the void. The Welsh Labour leader returned to the United State's to visit the Pacific coast and he had great receptions in San Francisco where he addressed gatherings at shipyards, where are being constructed many war vessels for Britain.

In a recorded message, which was released nationwide over the radio, he said: "I- bring to the people of America the greetings of my people in Britain. It might be asked: 'Who is this bearer of greetings from the indomitable people of the impregnable little island of Britain?" My name is Jack Jones, a typical representative of the average British family; a father who served in the last war and whose four sons went to serve in this war. One of those sons fell at El Alamein and was decorated. I hope to be worthy of my mission in America of working f 0r... a better understanding and a greater faith in our common cause between the. two English-speaking peoples. Britain now in the fourth blacked-out winter of the war is determined to see this through to the bitter but glorious end. We don't fear any lowering further of our subsistence level. Suffered Much

"We have suffered greatly and have endured much, but we are determined to endure to the end, the bitter and glorious end. To-night my people in Britain, after having celebrated and paid tribute to the splendid courage of Russia, are going to work through blasted and battered streets, going to work and carrying on and working even harder than ever before. The women in Britain increasingly are coming into the picture along the home front. From a small population we in Britain have to maintain armies on many fronts, and we have suffered many serious losses. Gaps in our long lines have been filled, and as we take men from essential industries we train women to take their places. I have in mind one great plant visited by Mrs Roosevelt, where there are 25,000 workers engaged on the production of, war material. Eighteen thousand were women and 7000 men. To-day the percentage has been altered and,, owing to the call-up for more armed men, the percentage to-day is 21,000 women and 4000 men. We in Britain have solved our manpower problem by calling upon the spirit of Women to come forward and fill the place of men. Therefore, we have no manpower problem, because our limit is the last man and the last woman.

"In industry we have boys and girls from 14 to 17, and when they become 18 they go into the armed forces. Boys and girls alike go into uniform. We have several forces in Britain to-day—the army, navy, the air forces and the land army that great army of women who have come forward to assist in winning the war by producing more food, and it is due to their efforts and patriotism that we have increased from 40 to 60 per cent of our food. When I left Britain the asked me to convey their greetings and warmest appreciation of the help we have received to endure, that help received from the people of America. I conveyed that to the gatherings of the shipyards in San Francisco, where they were most impressed, and what I told them had a great reaction. "On my return to Britain, I am carrying a compliment from America to my people. As my people are the unfailing admiration of the other United Nations, so do the people of America become the unfailing inspiration of my people.

Growth Of Faith

"I have noted the growth of faith in our common cause and determination on the part of the people of America, cost what it may, to see this struggle through to the end. I have noted the readiness with which the people of America are preparing to make sacrifices which we made, as we were in the war before them two years ago. I have noted the decrease in resentment or annoyance at the limitation due to the war, and it is gratifying to me find the spirit in America now in accord with the spirit of the British. I could

reveal the glory of the courage of the women of Britain and the thousands of mothers who have voluteered for work in war industries, who have left their children in nurseries and in creches or with relatives while the have gone into the assembly lines to produce the tools for their men to win this war. I have known mothers and grandmothers who have stood before everything and who have worked month after month and year after year to remain at work while the district where they lived was being bombed, and when the glow of fires was seen rising from their home districts. Loyal and disciplined they remained in the plants hoping to luck that their loved ones at home would be spared. Many thousands of the men and women have gone home after a night of terror and the forces of spreading hell by the Germans had wrecked destruction over God's earth, only to find there were no homes and no families left. "In one month, that of January, 1943, the casualties were light in the war on their doorsteps, but 330 were killed and 550 wounded. But we wiped the blood from our faces, tightened our belts and buried our dead and then returned with even greater determination of licking the enemy and making an end of Hitlerism and all other baneful isms; of returning to the job of laying the foundations of a new world in which war and the killing of little children shall be no more. Again, I convey the heartfelt greetings of the people of Britain to you the people of America. Let us never doubt each other, and continue beleiving in each other and having faith with' works, and we shall go forward into the peace, the Promised Land, in which the peoples of these two Englishspeaking countries will stand together in the remaking of a world nearer to the desire of the hearts of the best of us and in keeping with the wishes of God."