CRYSTAL CLEAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 30, 4 August 1939, Page 10

CRYSTAL CLEAR

BRITAIN'S ATTITUDE

NEED FOR UNITY

(British Official Wireless.)

(Received August 4, 2.40 p.m.)

RUGBY, August 3.

It had been assumed in some quaiv ters, said the Foreign Secretary in the House of Lords, that if Britain had been represented by a Cabinet Mini* ter instead of her Ambassador a quick agreement would have been secured in Moscow. He did not think experience supported that. The fact that Britain and France had decided to dispatch military missions to Moscow was evidence of their determination to bring these negotiations to an early and successful conclusion.

"On the eve of our adjourning for the recess," said Lord Halifax, "I cannot encourage anyone to feel complacent about the international situation;. That would not be in accordance with facts and with the possibilities as we believe them to exist today. Indeed, it may be that the next few weeks or months may prove critical. Britain's policy is, I hope, sufficiently clear and so generally accepted that I need not recapitulate it. I myself tried to define it in a speech something over a month ago. To that speech I have nothing to add, and I certainly have nothing to withdraw from it. "We have tried to make the position of this country crystal clear. We have no aggressive designs. Our alliances and understandings have not been framed with any aggressive intent. It only remains for us to keep calm as far as we may, to be united, to avoid exaggerated attention to rumour, and to be neither over-confident nor too pessimistic. A united nation which knows exactly "where it stands and knows itself to be strong can meet the future, whatever it may hold, with con= fidence."