Manawatu Evening Standard. THURSDAY, NOV. 30, 1944. MR CHURCHILL.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 2, 30 November 1944, Page 4

Manawatu Evening Standard. THURSDAY, NOV. 30, 1944. MR CHURCHILL.

Today Britain's wartime Prime Minister attained his 70th birthday. Air Churchill will receive the good wishes of every part of the British Empire and of every other United Nation upon the happy celebration of the Psalmist's allotted span. He has proved himself one of the greatest Prime Ministers the Empire has known. His fighting spirit was the leadership Britain required in the dark days of 1940 when, their commencement heralded by the reverses in Norway, Mr Churchill was called to the office he has held ever since. It was indeed the remarkably good fortune of the British Empire that the man was available when the hour demanded him. The early days of his leadership were filled with disasters to the Allied cause and when France fell the British Empire stood alone, its heart exposed to the titanic blast of the Nazi war machine. Then it was that Mr Churchill told the nation that the "whole fury and might of. the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. . . .

Let us therefore address ourselves to our duty, so bear ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire lasts for a thousand years men still will say, 'This was their finest hour.''" With him Britain stayed firm. With him they said: "We shall not flag or fall. We shall go on to the end. . . . We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. . . . We shall never surrender and even if, which 1 do not for a moment believe, this island, or a large part of it, were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed, and guarded by the British fleet, will carry on the struggle until, in God's good time, the New World . . . sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the Old." The impact of those words, a writer has said, awoke the conscience of millions of men.

The years since early 1940 have been extremely arduous for even one of Mr ChurchilL's robustness. He has sailed the seas to the New World and met Mr Roosevelt in r inference. He has addressed ihe Congress of the United States and the House of Commons of Canada. He has flown to Africa where he consulted with Mr Roosevelt at their famous conference at Casablanca, and to the great dismay of the nation was stricken with pneumonia. Happily he recovered and in December of last year was again in North Africa, this time at Cairo where with' President Roosevelt and General Chiang Kai-shek he discussed the war against; Japan. The memorable talks at Teheran in which Marshal Stalin joined followed and it was a few days later that Mr Churchill again fell a victim to pneumonia, being nursed back to health in Cairo in a kindlier climate than England's in December. It has been said of Mr Churchill that he has made himself the most mobile of the heads of the Allied Governments, perhaps because the flexible British system makes the absence of the Prime Minister from Westminster technically easier than that of either the President from Washington or the Premier from Moscow. Nevertheless, there is anxiety in Britain that Mr Churchill should rest more, even though he returned from his recent conference

in Moscow, travelling again by air, unaffected by its arduous labours. The hope of everyone is that he will be spared to see the United Nations successful in their tremendous struggle against the Nazis and Japan, and then have years of rest from the cares of office. He will have earned it, as well as the gratitude of the Empire for what he has done.