NO COMPROMISE

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 10, 11 July 1940, Page 11

NO COMPROMISE

BRITAIN'S ATTITUDE

MINISTER'S SOLEMN PLEDGE

THE WORKERS' PART

(British Official Wireless.)

(Received July 11, noon.) RUGBY, July 10,

Speaking in London, the Minister of Labour (Mr. Ernest Bevin) said: "In the darkest hour, when it looked as if no more than 20 per cent, of our men would get back from France, every Minister in the Government in assembly—not only the War Cabinet but those of us who were not in the War Cabinet —solemnly resolved to see it through and have no compromise with Hitler. "I have not witnessed any going back on that resolve, and I think it is only fair to my colleagues, with whom I have taken a share in the Government, that I should say that if I saw any weakness I should be the first to tell the country. I made up my mind when I went into the Government that there would be no settlement so far as I was concerned with the Nazi regime. If they beat us to smithereens there will still be no settlement." (Cheers.) The Minister stated that in those countries which had fallen to Hitler there was no evidence that any part of the working .classes operated as "fifth columnists." The woi-kers had no delusions about Hitler. "In France today it is our people, the leaders of the Labour movement who are missing first and foremost," he said. "It is not the men of big business, it is our people who have gone. There can be no compromise with a system that puts my comrades into concentration camps for no other reason than that they stick to their principles. I speak with feeling because so many of them- have gone. I will work myself to the bone to revenge every one of them." Mr. Bevin revealed that after Dunkirk was evacuated his Department was informed that many thousands of men were wanted for home defence. Within 24 hours every man, with equipment, was supplied for manning Britain's home defences. "For obvious reasons," said Mr. Bevin, "I cannot give you actual figures, but it is a very large army. In the urgency of the moment it was not possible systematically to organise, so I had to rely on a sentimental appeal to the great character of the British workman, who responded magnificently." %