1941 is Our Year of Fate

Manawatu Times, Volume 66, Issue 124, 27 May 1941, Page 5

1941 is Our Year of Fate

Utmost Gravity of Next Six Months MENZIES’ CLABION CALL EOB UNITY United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. Received Tuesday, 1.30 a.m. SYDNEY, May 26. 4 ‘ There is only one fight that matters to-day and I call on the wffiole of Australia to go through with it, ’ ’ declared Mr. Menzies in a rousing speech delivered at the Sydney Town Hall to-night. The occasion was his welcome home by fellow Cabinet Ministers and citizens. Mr. Menzies described 1941 as “our year of fate,” and prayed to God we would get through this year in safety. He warned the people of the Commonwealth that for the next six months American help could not be decisive in the Mediterranean. America had a long way to go before iier war v,(heels would fully revolve and in the battle of 1941 Britishers must depend on their own strength and their own resources and draw upon their own courage and resolution. Spending on non-essentials must cease and every available penny must be devoted to building armoured vehicles, anti-tank guns, artillery and other weapons whicih will make not only a heroic but a victorious army. He repeated what he said in the United States: There will be no compromise with the enemy. Iffius the Empire would be confronted with all sorts of developments of the utmost gravity in the next six months in Turkey, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Spain, Gibraltar and the Atlantic. While we would not lock in vain to the United States the hour had struck for complete unity and co-operation among all men and ali parties. He was not suggesting that the Labour Pnrty should sink its identity or its ideals. What he urgently desired was that Parliament should become an instrument of war rather than an instrument of dissension. Mr. Menzies received rounds of applause which were repeated during his recital of his experiences in England, also whenever he mentioned the name of Churchill.