THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 125, 20 February 1941, Page 6

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Comments —Reflections

"Let ne? man lake this struggle lightly.’’—Mr. Ernest Brown.

••When 1 get to the shelters 1 find Hie children and some of Hie grown ups asleep and others knitting and ehatting, passing round hot tea. anti they say. -Wouldn't Hitler be annoyed if he could see us all?' The three and four-year-old children bear the distant sirens before anyone and rim in to their parents saying, 'The Germans are coining’ before the grown-ups hear anything at all. Then the children seize their gas masks, games, comic papers, etc., and bustle their families dowu iuto the shelters.” —A London Auxiliary Service woman.

"Don’t, kid yourself that sitting around reading about raids and hearing about them on the radio is worse than being in them. When a bomb comes whistling dowu and you hold your breath wondering just exactly where it’s going to fall, one experiences real frigbl and no one is ashamed to admit it. That it is possible to get used to explosions in the distance, to the shrapnel whizzing overhead, the noise of buildings crumbling dowu, the sight of tires, with flames piling on flames, I’ve learut by now. That it’s possible to get used to hearing bombs coming at you, the whistle getting louder and louder as it nears the earth, I don’t believe.” —A British Army doctor.

"A series of surveys by the British Institute of Public Opinion has revealed a sharp stiffening of British public opiniou against the idea of a negotiated peace with Hitler. “Whereas last March one-fourth of all British voters polled were in favour of opening negotiations for peace,” Dr. Gallup says, “today the proportion who actually favour this has shrunk to 7 per cent. The overwhelming majority say that if someone in their presence suggested a negotiated peace with Germany now, they would either contradict him or report him to the authorities, apparently on the ground that such a suggestion amounts to treason. One of the most interesting aspects of the democratic process in a nation at war is the mere fact that a public survey cau be taken in which voters are freely permitted to say whether they want the war to end.” —“New York Times.”

Major-General James E. Chaney, one of America’s chief air strategists, who went to London last October to take up a post of air observer, and who inspected every branch of the British air defence network during German bombardments and watched Britain’s bomber squadrons at work, stated on his return to New York; “My observations abroad have led me to the belief that England can’t lose this war unless she becomes overconfident or careless. On the Continent German military success was based on just three things: overwhelming air superiority, superior mechanized forces and the effective use of spies, saboteurs and traitors. When the Nazis reached the English Channel after the collapse of France they tried to get superiority in the air —and failed. They can’t get their mechanized panzer divisions in a position to use them against the British, and after the British evacuation from Flanders potential spies, traitors and others in the British Isles who might give aid to Germany have been most effectively dealt with.”—“New York Times.”

"Here is all the young manhood of the Commonwealth —the most splendid human material ou earth—standing shoulder to shoulder to defend Christendom; yet it can be only a small minority of them who have any clear, conscious understanding of that in defence of which they are embodied. The same is true of the nation as a whole. Fundamentally, it is Christian still at heart. Materialistic creeds are repugnant to it. The Christian standard of values claims -its reverence. When it sees them challenged, as they are today, by avowedly anti-Christian philosophies embodied in politics of exploitation, il rallies gloriously in their defence. The nation has not abjured its Christian heritage. But how consciously do we possess and how much are we doing to retain it? Christian civilization, we know well, may be destroyed by external enemies. Wbat we have not yet clearly enough realized is that it may bo forfeited by neglect. There is a law of spiritual vacuum which was enunciated long ago, and is being verified relentlessly iu the experience of this generation.”—Canon F. It. Barry, of Westminster.

“Turkey has nothing but contempt for Italy and no serious fear of Germany. President Inonti's public declarations at the beginning of this month were all that we, as Turkey’s ally, could desire. But the Anglo-Turkish treaty contains the express reservation that no undertakings embodied in it shall lie so interpreted as to involve Turkey in war with Russia. It might, therefore, lie quite possible for Russia, if she chose, to immobilize Turkey at a moment when both we and Greece might lie extremely glad of Turkey’s aid. That, contingency has to tie faced, and it probably represents the worst that can come out of the Berlin conversations. There will, of course, lie plenty of window-dressing, plenty of rhetorical bombast about the co-opera-tion of Russia in the creation of the new order—alias the new tyranny—in Europe and Asia, and possibly enough economic agreements whereby Russia will undertake to supply oil find other commodities (which is by no means the same thing as supplying them) to Germany, and perhaps to grant facilities for the production of aeroplanes out of range of British bombers which have already got as far as the Skoda works at I’ilsen.” —"The Spectator,” London. ♦ « « Tlie Elaine Immortal, The splendours of the firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not; Like stars to their appointed height they climb. And death is the low mist which cannot blot The brightness it may veil. —Shelley.