THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 113, 6 February 1941, Page 6

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Comments—Reflections

“If Britain wins we win. We say to America, ‘Hurry up, burry up, and send all we have to Britain.’ We believe that there is still a God in heaven ruling justly, and that Britain will win and win decisively.”—Mr. William Green, President of the American Federation of Labour.

“Actually a bomb drops in approximately a perfect parabola (in relation to the earth) and falls almost directly below the ’plane. The reason is that, it receives a forward impetus from the aircraft. The slight lag of a bomb behind the ’plane is due to. air resistance and is only about 100 yards in a 10,000-foot drop.”—Mr. Louis Ingram in the "Manchester Guardian.”

"Cape Town is at last able to welcome the first of the children whom the inhumanity of Nazi war-making has sent to our country. The need for their coming has been made all too clear during the past weeks of savagery over London, and our admiration for the fortitude of their parents and elder relatives in what has now become the battle area, adds to the warmth of the welcome awaiting the children. A strange country, unfamiliar scenes await our young guests, but with the elasticity of youth, they will soon adapt themselves to their new life, and in the safety and peace of our country they will resume the healthy development which the war threatened to arrest in their own homes. Their care is one job of personal service which the South Africans can do in the great cause, and we know that it is a job that will be done heartily and well.”—“Cape Times."

.“'The boldest measures are the safest,’ said Nelson. At every hour henceforth we must remember that word. The eastern Mediterranean is the sea where Nelson’s genius of attack filled the world with his fame wheh iu one naval battle he destroyed all the hopes and prospects of Napoleon’s adventure in Egypt. Far more critically than ■then the fate and fortunes of everything we fight for are staked in the eastern Mediterranean. Ou oue hand, this is a situation which requires strong strokes with measured audacity against the Axis plan for the destruction of the British Empire. Ou the other hand, the scene of Mussolini’s latest aggression has been always penetrated through and through by the influence of sea power. Henceforth the eastern Mediterranean offers unexpected and unprecedented advantages for the combined action of all British arms.” —Mr. J. L. Garvin.

“The Dardanelles is the place for us to watch in the Near East. And the place from which to watch is those Greek islands which command the exit and are now available, by the fact of Greece becoming an active ally, as bases for our Fleet and Air Force. Like the Bosphorus, the Dardanelles has Turkish territory on both sides. Turkey is like a time-bomb planted in Germany’s Near Eastern plans. Interfered with, it may go off. If Germany's ambitions in the Levant do provoke Turkey to war, the situation in the Near East will quickly change to our advantage. It would then be the British and the Turks together who would occupy Syria, which our enemies are preparing to use as a base against us. The one certainty is that, iu pushing on towards the Near East Germany and her ally are coming up against uuknown quantities. It. may before long l»e their turn to find themselves confronted with unpleasant surprises.”— Mr. G. Ward Price, in the “Daily Mail,” Loudon.

"1 want to say something about the splendour of devastation because that, too, does appeal to a great many people in this country. The South window of Westminster Hall, I hope, will never be repaired. It reminds me of Fountains Abbey, a famous relic of the past. In the same way, a great many ruins in this city are the outward and visible sign of a great epoch. Whenever you go to Heidelberg, what do they show you? Not the university. They take you up the hill and show you the ruins of the castle which blown up by Napoleon. That is their pride, a glorious ruin. 1 think that Westminster Hall is a glorious ruin, and I am not certain that the Temple Hall should not be preserved as a glorious ruin. Was it not Maculay who drew a picture of a future New Zealander gazing mi London from the ruins of London Bridge? I do not see why he should not, if he comes and sits ou the ruins of London Bridge 2000 years hence, think of the glorious resistance made by London to bombardment. The tradition tlmt London lias established in the last two months is far and .'way the finest thing in the whole of the history of London. Do not let us blot, it out.”—Mr. Wedgwood, M.F.. in the House of Commons.

“Germany and Italy arrived at a conception of democracy which led them to repudiate it as a system that encouraged unlimited selfishness, and those two countries, which were experimentin.if with free institutions, deliberately turned their backs on them. Though, no doubt, there is in those countries, underground, a great multitude of people who distrust the regimes in which they have to live, there is no denying that the great majority accepted them. Communism is a religion of unity: the whole principle of Fascism is unity, and the same is true of Nazism. Germany perfects its unity by coercion find suppression, and liquidates all I hose whose loyalty is not given, so tlmt, in the end. unity depends, not U[K>n the loyalty of those who adhere, but upon the suppression of those who repudiate. At the moment this form of forcible unification is by its immense power spreading itself over the world. It has had amazing success on the material plane, ami it threatens the kind of life we have come to treasure, and that some other nations with us have learned to treasure, and we are engaged in the task of throwing it back."-—Dr. Temple, Archbishop of York.

“Prepared.” By how much unexpected, by so much Must we awake endeavour for defence; For courage mountetli with occasion; Let them be welcome then, we are prepared. —Shakespeare (King John).