“Fainthearts and Feebleguts”

Manawatu Times, Volume 66, Issue 99, 28 April 1941, Page 5

“Fainthearts and Feebleguts”

AUSTRALIAN DEFEATISTS TRENCHANTLY ATTACKED Received Monday, 1.15 a.m. SYDNEY, April 27. “If I find any whisperers in this country I will hit them as hard and bitterly as the law will allow without respect to persons,” declared Army Minister Spender in an address when opening the new military hospital costing almost a million pounds at Concord suburb. Mr Spender trenchantly condemned defeatists whose voices had been frequently heard recently. He could only describe them as a company of fainthearts and feebleguts who ran whining for cover when the Empire suffered reverses overseas. He appealed for national unity and expressed the hope that Labour would take its courage in both hands and come into an all-party Government. Mr. John Curtin, leader of the Federal Opposition, in a broadcast to-night repudiated a German-inspired suggestion that there was any political disunity in Australia. Iu regard to a further suggestion originating from certain groups in America that Australia was pulling out of the war, he emphasised that this was utterly false. Australia as a whole was completely behind the Mother Country and would continue there to the last.