UNITED IN ARMS

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 195, 14 May 1940, Page 8

UNITED IN ARMS

Message From Mr. Winston Churchill MR. FRASER’S REPLY The Prime Minister, Mr. Fraser, bas received the following telegram from the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Mr. Winston Churchill: “On accepting Ili.s Majesty’s invitation to till the office of Prime Minister I send you my warmest greetings. A great responsibility has fallen to me at this critical hour, but its weight is lightened by the sure knowledge that I can rely on your whole-hearted support and that of the other Prime Ministers of oversea Dominions. The people of the British Commonwealth of Nations are once again' united in arms against tyranny and barbarism. Together we shall suffer ami strive, together we shall perserve and the gales shall not be shut on freedom and justice.”

To this telegram Mr. Fraser has sent the following reply:— “I have to acknowledge and thank you for your message of May 13 and I must cordially reciprocate your greetings. I have noted with great, interest your assumption of office of Prime Minister and the formation of a new Government on a wide political basis, and I wisli at once to assure you of tlie fullest measure of co-operation from the Government and people of _ New Zealand, European and Maori alike. “Tlie responsibilities that will devolve upon you and your colleagues in this critical stage of the great struggle upon which we have entered together will be most onerous, but you may rely entirely upon our sympathetic understanding and our whole-hearted support in all measures necessary to bring this struggle to an early and successful conclusion. At this time particularly, when the enemy’s forces have at last been fully unleashed, we can confidently rely on the determination of our people throughout the British Commonwealth, which is never stronger than in a crisis such as this, on tlie justice of our cause and on our efforts, undertaken as they are by our freewill, to release ourselves and the world for all time from the threat of domination by brutal forces directed with unrelenting cruelty.”