Evening Post TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1939. BE OF GOOD HEART!

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 105, 31 October 1939, Page 8

Evening Post TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1939. BE OF GOOD HEART!

"Be of good heart, Australia!" is the message of the First Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. Winston Churchill), carried by the new Admiral of the Australian Navy, Rear-Admiral Grace. "There is," he adds, "nothing |to fear; Britain is full of hope." The hope that is in men doubles the value of the weapons they carry. Though the mechanised elements in modern warfare loom so large, the man behind the gun or the driving wheel retains his proportionate importance, and it is still true that, in attaining victory, the morale is to the material in the proportion of three to one. Whole ajr fleets could be'sacrificed in war by being hurled in mass at big cities. And yet, in .the finish, and other things being not hopelessly unequal, victory would lie with moral superiority, founded on a good cause and on human hope.

It was in this last week of October, but twenty-five years ago, that the same First Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. Winston Churchill) sat down at the Admiralty to write what he describes as "a note for publication." Then, as now, its dominant theme was hope; the condition it aimed to dispel was discontent with the war's progress. In direct line o£ succession from such discontent are despair and defeatism. So Mr. Churchill, partly in self-defence against critics of the Admiralty, and partly in exercise of that leadership instinct which inspires early attack upon the germ of defeatism, penned an appeal direct to the public. In October of 1914 there was "a great deal of discontent"—-the Marne victory (September) already forgotten, the decisive character of the naval blockade not yet recognised. "All that they [the Press and the public] saw at this time was that a few German cruisers were apparently doing whatever they chose upon the oceans and sinking British merchantmen day after day." Mr. Churchill broke in upon this one-sided view with a statement of things done and to be done-—a message of achievement (things unseen or barely seen) and of hope. "The discovery and destruction" of "eight or nine German cruisers believed to be at large," he told the public, are "largely a matter of time, patience, and good luck." Luck in wartime is never the monopoly of one side, nor is there ever in wartime a monopoly of opportunity. The safety of a raiding enemy ship is the safety of a needle in a hayloft. The vast expanses of sea and ocean and the many thousands of islands of the archipelagos offer an almost infinite choice of movement to the enemy's ships. In spite of every effort to cut off their coal supply, it has hitherto been maintained by one means or other in the face of increasing difficulties. Link this up with present evidence of enemy refuelling operations, and with the Pan-American movement to push the war away from American coasts, and it is seen that much of the 1914 raider problem is with us today. And in 1914, just as in 1939, it was insufficiently realised by tKe public that the luck of the sea cuts both ways. Mr. Churchill wrote in 1914, and he could write today, that "the same vastness of the sea which has so far enabled the German cruisers to avoid capture will protect the trade." Oceanic vastness, weather vagaries, and the complexities of archipelagos hide merchantmen from raider as of ten as they hide raider from avenging warship or squadron. Discounting the list of marine sinkings, hope strives to emphasise the luck of unconvoyed, merchantmen that were not sunk, the comparative immunity of the convoyed, the moderate insurance rates (in 1914 as now), and the vast secret naval network spread to catch raiders, both surface and under-sea. Hope is a quality vital alike to both leaders and masses, and never more vital to leaders than when masses tend to be despondent. By avoiding despondence, peoples reinforce their leaders' often taxed courage; and if anyone doubts that hope and courage are the life-breath of successful leadership, let him read Mr. Churchill's story of first reactions at the Admiralty to the pre-Marne retreat (late in August, 1914) of the French and British armies before victorious Germans: In Admiralty House at 7 a.m. (August 24, 1914) the door of my bedroom opened and Lord Kitchener appeared. He paused in the doorway, and I knew in a flash, and before ever he spoke, that the event had gone wrong. Though his manner was quite calm! Jus ia.ee swas different,, His eyes

rolled more than ever. His voice, too, was hoarse. He looked gigantic. "Bad news," he said. I read the telegram. The telegram told of the retreat in France, and for the moment presented to the mind a vision of the Germans doing to France what they have since' done to Poland. But die vision was a mirage. Within twenty days came the glorious "counterstroke of the Marne. Hope again triumphant!

These intimate ChurchilUan glimpses of tile Great War, of the | supreme need of hope in high places, and of the importance of a basic foundation of hope among the people at large, seem to be especially valuable when John Bull and his offspring are treading the same road again. There is the memory of an almost paralysing peril; there is also the precious memory of the peril overcome. Mr. Churchill writes that "the apparition of Kitchener Agonistes in my doorway will dwell with me as long as I live. It was like seeing old John Bull on the rack!" Over perils past, and perils to come, John Bull has been, and will be, triumphant, because he can suffer without despair, and looks beyond the night of adversity to the dawn of hope and courage.