FIELD MARSHAL SLIM IS “BIT SUSPICIOUS"

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 June 1950, Page 5

FIELD MARSHAL SLIM IS “BIT SUSPICIOUS"

WELLINGTON, This Day (P.A.)— “I come here not with any idea of war-mongering—1 am a bit like you. I have seen too much of .wars.. I have got too many holes in me to want to go to war again,” said Field Marshal Sir William Slim in a brief address at the annual conference of the N.Z.R.S.A. today. “I want peace on terms, simple terms. I want peace on terms that I can live my life as an Englishman,” he said. “If I cannot have peace on those terms, 1 shall have the other thing. I am not afraid.”

Field Marshal Slim said that the countries behind the Iron Curtain were out to Communise the world, because they did not believe that a Communist State could exist side by side with other countries.

The British Empire, he said, would never start an aggressive war. The only people who did that were dictators, fanatics and criminal lunatics. On the other side of the Iron Curtain they had the first two. He did not know about the third, but he was a bit suspicious. Defence, he said, was the best way to ensure peace and the first to be ready should be the British Empire, the greatest force for peace in the world today. “I am riot out here to rush people to wars, but to stop wa'r by getting the people of the British Empire together,” continued Field Marshal Slim. “But if the occasion arises, we will know what to do and have good and firm leadership from our leaders.”

Field Marshal Slim said that the New Zealanders he had met during the Gallipoli campaign were some of the finest soldiers he had ever known. Unfortunately in the Second World War he had been stationed in a part of the world where they did not let the New Zealanders serve. “I asked for you,” he said, “but I asked for a hell of a lot I did not get.”