“TWELVE O’CLOCK IN LONDON”

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23129, 19 September 1940, Page 8

“TWELVE O’CLOCK IN LONDON”

NEWSPAPER COMMENT IN NEW YOHK NEW YORK, July 24. The "New York Times" publishes to-day, under the heading "Twelve O'clock," the following leading article: It is 12 o'clock in London. Hitler has spoken and JLoz-d Halifax has replied. There is no more to be said. Or is there? Is the tongue of Chaucer, of Shakespeare, of Milton, of the King James translation of the Scriptures, of Keats, of Shelley to be hereafter in the British Isles the dialect of an enslaved race? Let us try to see clearly. We have to look back a good many, centuries to find the beginnings, of English liberty. We see it as a rough and obstinate growth heaving the rich soil under the oaks of lordly estates, breaking out in Wat Tyler's time and in Cromwell's, and in the day of the second James, forcing through the Reform Act, never perfected, never giving up. We see the spread of democracy and of Empire side by side, confused and turbulent. But we see democracy ever marching on. It is 12 o'clock in London. Not 12 o'clock for the Empire—there is no Empire any more. Not 12 o'clock for the old "dominion over palm and pine." Twelve o'clock for the common people of England, out of whom England's greatest souls have always come. Twelve o'clock for all that they are and have been, for all those things

which make life worth living for fre# men. Twelve o'clock—and the wisest pro?! phet in Christendom cannot say what is to come. The old, old towns of Brir tain, the hills and cliffs and shorel and meadows, rich with history, the homes and lives of 45,000,000 people, the great British traditions of human worth and dignity, the folk sayings, the deep wisdom and the long-suffering hopes of a race—these, not being pleasing to Hitler, are condemned. We know little, and for a time shall know little, of this unparalleled spectacle of the nation rising as by* a single impulse to the defence of "this blessed plot, this earth, this realm,' this England." From our own shores we cannot see the shadow over ancient gardens, over houses hoary with age, over the graves of poets and philosophers, and the tombs of the martyrs. We know only that one of the green and lovely oases of civilisation in the wilderness of man's time on earth is foully threatened, and that the whole world for ever more will be the poorer if it falls. Words falter. There are no phrases for the obscene ambition that attacks, for the magnificent mobilisation of a people that defends, unshaken and unafraid. We can only pray that soon the time will come when the vultures no longer defile British skies and the cry goes out from John o' Groats Jo Land's End: "Twelve o'clock, and all 3 well." -