PLEDGE OF SUPPORT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 63, 15 March 1945, Page 6

PLEDGE OF SUPPORT

MR. CHURCHILL

CONSERVATIVES UNANIMOUS (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) Rec. 10.50 a.m. LONDON, March 14. The annual conference of the Conservative Party carried unanimously a resolution expressing gratitude to Mr. Churchill for his magnificent leadership during the war, congratulating him on the success of his efforts, and pledging to him the party's constant and loyal support for the fight against Germany and Japan. The Minister of Education, Mr. R. A. Butler, who is presiding at the conference, proposed the resolution.

"We thank Mr. Churchill for his resounding achievements," said Mr. Butler. "We pledge him our abiding support in the stern period ahead in which the enemies of freedom will be finally overthrown. We can look back today on the panorama of his achievements. We remember the patience with which the Prime Minister first gained the affection and then the overwhelming support of the two great figures who are the heads of the massive States of America and Soviet Russia. We remember the Atlantic meeting and the Teheran, Moscow, and Yalta conferences. This has been diplomacy on the grand scale. Its fruits have been seen in the qoncerted plans which are now yielding their historical results. This island and the British Commonwealth, for whose preservation we have always stood, have followed a leader whose position in the councils of the world has much in common with that of his distinguished ancestors. The Duke of Marlborough used to be seen now in Europe, now in the midst of the political life of England—ever travel-stained, and ever ready to transact business of the moment, whether domestic or foreign. The aircraft of today may land the traveller looking fresh as paint, but a smile or suitably fashionable headgear may often conceal from a delighted public the hard, anxious cares of the world and responsibilities. When Mr. Churchill sits as one of the triumvir who are deciding the future of the world, let us give him that buoyant feeling which can only come from the confidence that a stout company of friends believe in him.

THE WORLD WATCHING. "We ask him to bring the same sense of realism into the solution of foreign and domestic problems of the peace as he has infused into the national war effort. The public are always ready to take from him the hardest home truths as to what we can carry out and what is in the realm of fancy. Our greatest testing time lies ahead. Britain's future will be made or unmade m the next few years, and the eyes of the world are upon us. They know, as they did in 1940, that their fate is bound up with ours. Can it be wondered at that we look to the master builder and offer him our help in this his latest and greatest work —our national reconstruction?"

The resolution was carried unanimously, with cheers for Mr. Churchill. The conference unanimously carried a resolution recognising that housing might have to be provided with municipal Government grants to help people who are only able to pay the lowest rents, but expressing the opinion that private enterprise should be encouraged to play a full part and that as many citizens as possible should be enabled, by means of loans, to buy their own homes. *AA. a "? eetinS of the central council of the Conservative Party before the conference, Sir George Courthope was elected president, succeeding the Marquess of Salisbury. Mr. Butler was elected chairman of the council for the coming year.