IF CALL COMES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 111, 13 May 1939, Page 8

IF CALL COMES

EMPIRE UNITY

MR. CHURCHILL CONFIDENT

tßy Air Mall, from "The Post's" London

Representative.)

LONDON, April 20,

A warning that it might not be long before the British Empire would have once again to marshal and reveal its latent strength was given by Mr. Winston Churchill, M.P:, at a dinner in honour of Mr. R. B. Bennett, former Canadian Prime Minister.

"The policy pursued by the British Government might have been open to criticism for want of thoroughness and vigour," he said, "but no one can say that it has not been animated by patience and good faith, by a per- ■ sistent desire to avoid war, and by an I increasing willingness to run risks with other nations to prevent war. "I have sometimes differed from the Prime Minister, but, anyhow, the fact remains that if, on some fateful day, Mr. Chamberlain is compelled by outrage and aggression to give the dread signal, there is no party in Great Britain, there is no part of the British Empire, there is no free country which would not feel able to share in the struggle—the hard struggle—without the slightest self-reproach of bloodguiltiness. "Some foreigners mock at the British Empire because there are no parchment bonds or hard steel shackles which compel its united action, but there are other, forces far more subtle and far more compulsive to which the whole fabric spontaneously responds. These deep tides are flowing now. They sweep away in their flow differences of class and party. They override the vast ocean spaces which separata the Dominions of the King. The electric telegraph is an old story, the wireless broadcast is a new one, but we rely on a process far more widespread and equally instantaneous. SAME RESOLVE AND ACTION. "There are certain things which could happen, which it would not be necessary for us to argue about. No constitutional issues would arise. Everyone, in the loneliest ranch, or in most self-centred legislature, would see duty staring him in the face, and all hearts would have the same conviction—and not only the same conviction, but the same resolve to action. "It is refreshing to find that in the great American Republic these same resolves to resist at all costs the new machine-made forms of tyranny and oppression are also instinctive and strong. "Canada has a great part to play in the relations of Great Britain and the United States. She spans the Atlantic Ocean with her loyalties; she clasps the American hand with her faith and good will." t Mr. Bennett, said Mr. Churchill, had always known how to gather those forces which at the same moment consolidated the British Empire and also made harmonious its growing comradeship with the Government and people of the United States. They owed him a lasting debt for his services. This was not a time when they could spare a man like him. t "We must not turn from the path of duty. If the British Empire is fated to pass from life into history, we must hope it will not be by the slow processes of dispersion and decay, but in j some supreme exertion for freedom, for right, and for truth." Mr. Bennett, who suggested that each j Dominion should have a Minister resi-1 dent in London, said: "Whatever the difficulties or the sacrifices demanded, if ever the life of this Empire is at stake and democracy and the freedom we enjoy under it are threatened, then there must arise a feeling that would manifest itself by sweeping aside all the fine longings of peace and, so far as Canada is concerned at any rate, a demand that Canadians1 take their place in defending the life of the Empire."