READY TO DRIVE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20907, 6 October 1942, Page 5

READY TO DRIVE

SIX MONTHS HENCE NO ‘SUICIDE’ VENTURES MR. CURTIN OUTSPOKEN (By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (2.40 p.m.) SYDNEY, Oct. 5. The Prime Minister, Mr. J. Curtin, said that should events be favourable to the Allied cause in the south-west Pacific after the next six months, then we could look forward to an increase of strength which would enable the march to Victory to be started. “Holding on will be a grim business,” he said. “It should be a silent business. All the theorising of armchair strategists will not advance our men or throw the Japanese back one yard. lam not going to make out fighting men in New Guinea mere suicide squads to satisfy'those talkative arm-chair strategists.” ■ Mr. Curtin reaffirmed that the Australian Government had complete trust in General D. MacArthur, supreme commander in the southwest Pacific, and General Sir Thomas Blarney.

“It is the task of these commanders to hold on —a task all the more difficult because no fighting man likes being on the defensive.” he said. In the name of the fighting men, Mr. Curtin asked that Australia’s £100,000,000 austerity loan be oversubscribed. Mr. Curtin was supported in his national broadcast by the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Mr. P. Fraser, the Prime Minister of South Africa, General J. C. Smuts, and the Prime Minister of Canada, Mr. W. L. Mackenzie King. Mr. Fraser said that New Zealanders were proud to be marching side by side once again with the men who, a generation ago, made Anzac a term of imperishable fame and who at present are winning as great renown.