POSITION REVIEWED

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 April 1941, Page 7

POSITION REVIEWED

MR. CHURCHILL’S BROADCAST

CONFIDENCE IN FINAL ISSUE

British People Not Uneasy

[BRITISH OFFICIAL WIRELESS.]

RUGBY, April 27. Broadcasting, to-night, to listeners at Home and overseas, Mr. Churchill said: “I was asked, last week, whether I was aware of some uneasiness which, it was said, existed in the country, on account of the gravity, as it was described, of the war. So I thought it would be' a good thing to go and see for myself what this uneasiness amounted to. I went to some of our great cities and sea ports, which have been most heavily bombed. and to some places where the poorest people have got it worst. I have come back, not only reassured, but refreshed. To leave' the offices, with their ceaseless hum of activity and stress, and 8° the fronts, by which I mean the streets and wharves of London, Liverpool, Manchester, Cardiff, Swansea or Bristol, is like going out of a hothouse on to the bridge of a fighting ship. It is a tonic, which I should recommend to any who are suffering from fret- : fulness, to take in strong doses, when' they need it. i “Quite true, I have seen many painful scenes of havoc, and fine buildings and acres of cottages and homes blasted in rubble and heaps of ruins, but it is just in those very] places where the malice of a savage i enemy has done its worst, and where, the ordeal of men, women and ch 11-■ dren has been most severe, that I: found their morale most high and , splendid. Indeed. I feel encompassed . by an exultation of spirit in the people which seems to lift mankind and its troubles abovt: the level of material facts. Indeed, that joyous serenity, we think, belongs to a better world than this. Of their kind- ' ness to me, I cannot speak, because I have never sought it or dreamt oi i it. and can never deserve it. I only | assure you I and my colleagues, or I comrades rather, for that is what; they are, will toil with every scrap of I fibre and strength according to the | limits that have been granted to us, | not to fail these people, or be whol- I ly unworthy of their faithful gen- | erous regard. i “The British nation is stirred and j moved as it never has been at any time i in its long eventful famous history,! and it is no hackneyed figure of! speech to say that they mean to con- I quer or die.” Mr. Churchill said the triumph of battered cities over fire and the worst bombs could do, was a vindication of free institutions, and the civilised way of living. Those sublime terrible emo- > tions.of the battlefield were expert-! enced now by men women and chil- | dren. “This indeed is a grand heroic j period of our history, and the light of i glory shines upon all. You may im- | agine how deeply I feel my own re- i sponsibility towards all these people, I my own responsibility to bear my | part in bringing them safely out this . long stern scowling valley through, which we are marching, and not demand of them that their sacrifices be j in vain.” I

AID TO GREECE Stating it had been imperative that British policy should be upon the highest level, and honour be the only guide, Mr. Churchill continued: “Very few people realise how small were the forces with which General Wavell, that fine commander, whom we cheered in the good days, and will back through bad days, took bulk masses in Libya prisoners. In none of his successive victories could Wavell maintain in the desert or bring into action at one time more than two divisions, or about thirty thousand men. A call was made upon us which could not be resisted. Let me tell you about that call. You will remember how in November, the Italian Dictator fell upon the unoffending Greeks and without reason and without warning, invaded the country and how the Greek nation, reviving its classic faith, held his armies back. Meanwhile, Hitler who had been creeping and worming his way steadily forward, doping and pinioning one after another, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria, suddenly made it clear that he would come to the rescue of his fellow criminal.

“Lack of unity among the Balkan i States enabled him to build up a ' mighty army in their midst. While nearly all the Greek troops were busy I beating the Italians, the tremendous; German military machine suddenly i towered up on their other frontier. In I their mortal peril, the Greeks turned to us for succour. Strained as were our resources, we could not say them nay. By a solemn guarantee given i before the war, Britain had promised ( them her help. They declared that they would fight for their native soil, . even if neither their neighbours [ made common cause with them, and even if we left them to their fate.’ But we could not do that. There were ! rules against that kind of thing, and to j break those rules would be fatal to the honour of the British Empire, without which we neither hope nor deserve to win this hard war. Mili- ' tary defeat and miscalculation can be ' repaired. The fortunes of war are: fickle and changing, but an act of ! shame would deprive us of the respect we now enjoy throughout thq world. During the past year, we have ; gained by our bearing and conduct a potent hold upon the sentiments of, the people of the United States. ‘ U.S.A. AND OVERSEAS. * ' Never in our long history have we' been held in such admiration and re- ; gard across the Atlantic Ocean. In i that great Republic, now in much tra- ; vail and stress of soul, it is customary i to use all the many varied and solid arguments about American interests ; and American safety, which depends; upon the destruction of Hitler and his' foul gang and even-fouler doctrines.! But, in the long run, believe me, for I know, the action of the United ( States will be dictated not by a meth- j odicak calculation of profit and loss, i but by moral sentiments and thej growing flush of resolve which lifts; the wills of men and nations, and springs from the spiritual foundations of human life itself.

' “We, for our part were, of course, s bound to hearken to the Greek appeal 1 to the utmost limits of our strength. - We put the case to the Dominions, - Australia and New Zealand, and their i Governments, without in any way ig- - noring the hazards, and they told us . that they felt the same as we did. So ? an important part of the mobile por- ; tions of the Army of the Nile was sent > to Greece, in fulfilment of our pledge. It happened that the divisions avail- . able and best suited for this task were ; from New Zealand and Australia, and ; only half the troops who took part in ’ the dangerous expedition came from ’ the Mother Country. I see that Ger- • man propaganda is trying to make bad • blood between us and Australia, by making out that we used them to do what we would not have asked of the British Army. I shall leave it to Australia to deal with that taunt. Let us see what happened. We knew that ithe forces we could send to Greece i would not by themselves be sufficient Ito stem the German tide of invasion, : but there was very real hope that the ! neighbours of Greece would, by our intervention, be drawn to stand in line together with her, while time remained. How nearly that came off i will be known some day.

JUGOSLAV POSITION

' “The tragedy of Jugoslavia has been that this brave people has a Government which hoped to purchase ignoble immunity by submission to the Nazi will. Thus, when at last the people of Jugoslavia found out where they were being taken, and rose in one spontaneous surge of revolt, they saved the soul and future of their country, but it was already too late to save its territory. They had not time to mobilise their armies, but were struck down by the ruthless and highly-mechanised German armies, before they could even bring their armies into the field. Great disasters have occurred in the Balkans. Jugoslavia has been beaten down. Only in the mountains can she continue resistance. The Greeks have been overwhelmed. Their victorious Albanian army has been cut off and forced to surrender, and it has been left to the Anzacs and their British comrades to fight their way back to the sea, leaving their mark on all who hindered them.

“I turn aside to indulge for a moment in a little light relief. I dare say you read in the newspapers that, by a special proclamation, the Italian dictator congratulated the Italian army in Albania on the glorious laurels they had gained by their victory over the Greeks. Here, surely, is the world's record in the domain of the ridiculous and contemptible. The whipped jackal, Mussolini, who to save his own skin made all Italy a vassal State to Hitler, comes frisking up to the side of the German tiger, with the yelps not only of a puppet—that could be understood—but even of triumph.

DEFEAT IN LIBYA

“While those grievous events were taking place in the Balkan Peninsula and Greece, our forces in Libya sustained a vexatious, damaging'defeat. The Germans advanced sooner, and in greater numbers, than we or our Generals expected. The bulk of our armoured troops, which played such a decisive part in beating the Italians, had to be refitted, and the single armoured brigade, which had been judged sufficient to hold the frontier until about the middle of May, was worsted, and its vehicles largely destroyed by a somewhat - stronger German force. Our divisions had to fall back upon the very large Imperial armies that had been assembled, and can be nourished and maintained in the fertile delta of the Nile. The fortress of Tobruk, which flanks any German advance on Egypt, we hold strongly. There we have repulsed, many attacks, causing the enemy immense losses, and taking many prisoners. That is how matters stand in Libya and on the Egyptian front. We must now expect the war in the Mediterranean, on sea, and above all in the air, to become very fierce, varied and widespread. We have cleaned the Italians out of Cyrenaica, and it now lies with us to purge the province of Germans. That will be a harder task and we cannot expect to do it at once. You know, I never try to make out that defeats are victories. I never underrated the German as a warrior.” Recalling that he warned the nation, a month ago, misfortunes must be expected, Mr. Churchill said the only thing certain about war is that it is full of disappointments and mistakes, and he said it remained to be seen whether the Germans’ recent expeditions into the Balkans and Africa should prove mistakes. “This, however, I will venture—l would be very sorry to see the task of combatants in the Middle East exchanged, and for Wavell’s armies to be in the positions of the German invaders.” WAR MAY SPREAD. “That is only my personal opinion. I can well understand that there may be different views. ’ It is certain that fresh dangers, beside those threatening Egypt, may come upon us in the Mediterranean. The war may spread to Spain and Morocco. It may spread eastwards to Turkey and Russia. The Germans may lay their hands for a time upon the wheat lands of the Ukraine and the oil-wells of the Caucasus. They may dominate the Black Sea, and they may dominate the Caspian. Who can tell? We shall do our best to meet them and to fight them, wherever they go. But there is one thing certain. There is one thin* which rises out of the vast whirlpool which is very sure and solid, and which no one in his senses can mistake. Hitler cannot find safety from avenging justice in the East, the Middle East, or the Far East. In order to win this war, he must either conquer this island by invasion or he must cut the ocean lifeline which joins us to the United States.” Dealing with the prospects of invasion, Mr. Churchill said that the British strength grew every week and, comparing the position to-day with what it was last Summer, “even

after making all allowances for much more elaborate mechanical preparation on the part of the enemy,” he felt there was much to be thankful for, and, provided neither our exertions nor vigilance relaxed, even for a moment, he expressed the belief, “we shall give a very good account of ourselves.” Turning to the Battle of the Atlantic, Mr. Churchill spoke admiringly of the men who build, repair, load, and sail merchant ships. These ships, however, are easy to sink. He stated that there were never less than 2000 ships afloat, and never less than 300 or 400 in the danger zones. “It was with indescribable relief,” he continued, “that I learned of the tremendous decisions lately taken by Mr. Roosevelt and the people of the United States. The American Fleet and flying-boats have been ordered to patrol the wide waters of the Western Hemisphere, and to warn peaceful shipping of all nations outside the combat zone of the presence of lurking U-boats or cruisers belonging to the two aggressive nations. We British will, therefore, begin to concentrate our protecting forces far more upon the routes nearer home, and will take a far-heavier toll of the U-boats there.”

U-BOAT WARFARE.

German U-boat warfare was carried on entirely contrary to the international agreement, which she freely subscribed to only a few years ago, and was forming no effective blockade, but constituted “only merciless murder and marauding over wide and indiscriminate areas, utterly beyond the control of German sea-power.” After recalling his request to the United States, to “give us the tools and we will finish the job,” Mr. Churchill continued, “I mean ‘give them to us, put them within our reach,’ and that is what it now seems the Americans are going to do, and that is why I have a-very strong conviction that, through the Battle of the Atlantic will be long and hard, and the issue by no means determined, it has entered upon a more-grim, but it seems to me a far more-favourable phase. When you come to think of it, the United States are very closely bound up with us now, and have engaged themselves deeply in giving us material, and, within the limits I have mentioned, naval support. It is worth while, therefore, taking a look on both sides of the ocean at the forces which are facing each other in this awful struggle, from which there can be no drawing back. No prudent, far-seeing man can doubt that the eventual total defeat of Hitler and Mussolini is certain, in view of the respective declared re-' solves of the British and American Democracies.

“There are less than 70,000,000 malignant Germans, some of whom are curable, and some killable, and most of whom are now engaged in holding down the Austrians, Czechs, Poles and many other ancient races. The people of the British Empire and the United States number nearly 200.000.000 in their homelands and British dominions alone. They possess the unchallengeable command of the ocean, and will soon obtain decisive superiority in the air. They have more wealth and more technical resources, and they make more steel than the whole of the rest of the world put together. They are determined that the cause of freedom shall not be trampled down, nor that the tide of world progress shall be turned back by criminal dictators.”

MR. MORRISON’S ADDRESS

“LOOK AT BIG MAPS.’

RUGBY. April 26,

The Home Secretary (Mr. Herbert Morrison) spoke at Guildford to-day on Empire co-operation in the war effort, a co-operation of peoples and governments. Referring to recent set-backs and disappointments in the Balkans and Middle East, he said: “We knew we must expect set-backs of this kind—Mr. Churchill had warned us and our own common sense had put us on guard. We do not want to belittle these difficulties, which undoubtedly add to the burdens that must be borne by the armed forces and the peoples of the Empire, but we need see these episodes in perspective. We need to see them against the background of what is becoming with increasing speed a world war. Remember this advice, if you look at maps, look at big maps. Big maps remind us of the tremendous strength oi‘ the Empire throughout the world—strength which is being thrown more and more thoroughly and completely into the tasks of war. “The support we draw from the Empire is of three kinds. There is first manpower and fighting quality, a tremendous asset. Old soldiers welcome these superb brothers in arms. Our citizens and workers at Home, standing up manfully to their burdens, are filled with encouragement to learn of the epic deeds of their fighting kinsmen. Second, there is war production, where we are receiving assistance on a scale no man could have foreseen before the war. Last, and not least, support comes also in the council chambers. In the conduct of this war, there is a pooling of ideas and plans among the Empire countries. The policies and strategies hammered out in our war councils owe much to the wise co-operation of responsible governments in the great Dominions. When the Commonwealth of Australia and the Dominion of New Zealand are associated with us in a great military enterprise, they are associated equally closely in the formulation of policy in connection with that enterprise.

“This is sometimes spoken of as though it were done in fulfilment of a propei- obligation to them, and that is true, but it is not the whole truth. It is done also because we need the help of the fresh, untrammelled minds they bring to the council table. We are grateful at this moment to Australia for lending us her Prime Minister, whose presence here, which would have been a welcome asset at any time, is of exceptional value just now, when the personal part which he plays contributes so much to the achievement of a unified Imperial policy. By lending to us for the time being the able services of Mr. Menzies, Australia has added one more service to the common cause,” Mr. Morrison added. “The Commonwealth may be sure that her Prime Minister watches her interests with care in the War Cabinet.”

LORD HALIFAX CONFIDENT.

NEW YORK, April 25.

The British Ambassador in Washington (Lord Halifax), addressing the Atlanta Bar Association to-night, said: “Justice is inseparable from liberty. Wherever you find a long tradition of liberty, you also find a long tradition of justice. They are now in peril. All that our fathers fought for, all that we hold most precious, are threatened by the Nazi menace. Each day spells a new tragedy for the present generation. For millions of people in England tonight the balance between life and death hangs on a hair of incalculable chance.

“In Greece, we were well aware we could not bring comparable strength to match that which the Germans could bring. It surely was right to help those who had so gallantly espoused the cause of freedom. It was certainly right to make the enemy pay dearly for what he got on a scale that will not be without effect when known in Germany. “In Egypt, the German thrust is now held. • I have small doubt that General Sir Archibald Wavell and Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham between them can be relied upon to turn the present situation to the best advantage. “The British people and the world owe an unpayable debt to Mr. Churchill for his undaunted courage in very dark days. The world is fortunate is having two great leaders like Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill. With every month that passes I have no doubt these two men win begin to have more to say about the future of the world than Hitler or Mussolini,”

“NO KID GLOVE AFFAIR”

RUGBY, April 26.

Mr. Shinwell, a Labour M.P., speaking at Durham on Friday night, said: “It must not be forgotten that, in spite of the reverses, British forces in the field, on the sea and in the air had dealt the enemy many hard blows, and for this the country must pay tribute to the splendid courage and resourcefulness of their leaders.” But more and deadlier blows must be delivered before they would be in sight of victory. This war was no kid glove affair. All the enormous weight of the enemy had been brought into play to crush the forces of democracy. Britain, in turn, must organise for victory by everyone in the country pulling his weight in full.

GENERAL SMUTS’S VIEW.

CAPE TOWN, April 26.

The Prime Minister (General Smuts), broadcasting, said: “Some people appear to be depressed at the turn of events in the Balkans. They forget that in the last war the position of the Allies in that quarter was far worse, yet the Allies were finally victorious. This war won’t be settled in the Balkans. With the United States, its goodwill and vast resources, behind us, we may look forward with steadfast confidence. America will yet go all the way.” General Smuts said: “Hitler, to win the war, sooner or later must attempt an invasion of Britain. His victorious diversions in the Balkans and other parts of Europe would not in the end be of any avail to him.” Hitler had lost, he said, and not even the prospect of a stalemate remained to him.

COMMENT BY NEUTRALS,

RUGBY, April 26. Where comment is still free and men do not write or speak under Nazi intimidation, it is interesting to see how the meaning of the recent events in Greece is read. In the United States for example, the “Detroit Free Press” states: “The more territory Hitler conquers, the more certain is his doom, because Hitler’s way is to bring doom to free peoples.” General Hugh Johnson also expressed the opinion that the military catastrophe in Greece and the Balkans was not of itself a British defeat. He went on to argue that it would not necessarily be a British defeat if the whole Mediterranean was blocked out by plugging at both ends. The lifeline of the Empire had long been looped round the southern tip of Africa. . The same thought was expressed in Switzerland by the “National Zeitung” when it wrote: “It was clear from the outset of the campaign, that Greece might influence the struggle but would never bring a.final decision. Suez and Gibraltar offer two nerve centres for a partial solution, but the main front is England and it is there the war will be decided.” In Soviet Russia the May issue of the “Communist Party Journal” insists that the real battle of the war is still to come and it notes the gradualreadjustment of the balance of actual to potential power. It says: “The great disproportion of military strength following the defeat of France has decreased'and continues to decrease.” This process is accelerated by the mighty support given by United States to Britain and by the gradual mobilisation of the resources of the British Empire.