MR. CHURCHILL'S CALL TO FRANCE

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 98, 22 October 1940, Page 8

MR. CHURCHILL'S CALL TO FRANCE

It is a double blessing to the British peoples in their hour of trial that they should have been given a leader who inspires their confidence not only by his actions but also by his words. It is not that Mr. Churchill speaks at length and often. He does not; his utterances are comparatively rare; they are brief and always to the point, with hardly a single word that could be deemed superfluous. His broadcast addresses to the public at large, throughout the Empire, the Americas, and the world, are rarer still. Since he became Prime Minister they could be numbered, one fancies, speaking from memory, on the fingers of one hand. He reserves these broadcasts for great occasions, and seems to time them perfectly. There were the critical days of the collapse of France and the perils of the evacuation from Dunkirk; the beginning of the ordeal of the aerial bombardment of Britain and the ever-present danger of invasion. The world was doubtful of Britain's ability to hold ou t —Lord Lothian has said as much of the feeling in America —but the Churchill words, following the Churchill actions, restored confidence at home and abroad, and spread far and wide the conviction that the British spirit was unconquerable and would win through in the end. To this result the personality of Mr. Churchill, expressed in his broadcasts, has contributed immensely. He has a manner and an accent all his own, yet with a flavour of the soil of England that gives his simple, homely words the character of the very voice of the British people themselves. With him it is not just "London calling," but, genuinely, "Britain speaks." These unique qualities were never better illustrated than in Mr. I Churchill's broadcast appeal to j Frenchmen last night from London.] The time was opportune. Most, people, following the news, had come to realise that a full sense of the consequences of the Vichy Armistice, as it might be called, must be coming home to Frenchmen everywhere, and that, if they were to save France and help to save Europe from slavery, they must act accordingly. The British Prime Minister, with memories of the days, twenty-five years ago or more, when he marched with Frenchmen against the Boche in France, assured them that he was still marching with them to -victory once more. He denounced the Axis lie that Britain had any designs on the French empire as a cover for their own plans—Hitler and "his little Italian accomplice trotting along hopefully and hungrily, but rather nervously and timidly, by his side." "They both wish," said Mr. Churchill, in homely simile, "to carve up France and her empire as if it were a fowl—to the one a leg, to the other a wing or perhaps part of the breast." But what was worse, he said, was the reduction of all Europe to one "Bocheland" and the complete obliteration of French culture and institutions. And so he called on Frenchmen to re-arm their spirit before it was too late. "What we ask at this moment in our struggle to win the victory—which we will share with you—is that if you cannot help, at least you will not hinder." As earnest of ultimate victory Mr. Churchill reminded Frenchmen that Britain had as ever command of the seas, and by 1941 would have command of the air, hinting at land operations to follow. This message, which to Britons everywhere speaks for itself, Mr. Churchill conveyed also in French, spoken in the same deliberate way so that its meaning could not escape his hearers among the French with their glorious past recalled and the air of the "Marseillaise" ringing in their ears. The dawn will come and France will live again. "Vive la France!"