“No Recriminations Among Allies"-Halifax

Northern Advocate, 16 March 1944, Page 4

“No Recriminations Among Allies"-Halifax

(8.0. W.) RUGBY, March 14

The danger of allowing the enemy to drive a wedge between the Allies was stressed *by Viscount Halifax, speaking to the Boston Chamber of Commerce, United States.

“You will be told,” he said, “that Britain is not carrying a proper share of effort and sacrifice. We shall be told the same thing about you. We shall both be told that we are only fighting to enable Russia to Bolshevise Europe and the Russians will be told we are still leaving them to bear the brunt of war. The object will be just the same, to induce us. after we have beca poisoned by mutual suspicions, to agree together, or separately to a compromise peace, which will enable the Nazis to start all over again in preparing for a third world war. If you study what Axis propaganda is saying today to you and to us, and other Allies, you will find that the offensive has already started.”

Lend-Lease Propaganda

Lord Halifax mentioned that the Germans also had the unfailing subject of Lend-Lease for propaganda purposes. On January 19 Berlin reminded you ‘under Lend-Lease American property is being given away at a rate of 1,000.000 dollars a month. Most is going to the British, Bolshies and Chinese, ali of whom are capable of turning against the United States before this thing ends’. Three days earlier Berlin was telling Europe the ‘Lend-Lease agreement is merely the means by which the United States seeks domination. Its first and foremost victim is Britain’.

“So it goes on—a little dangerous because while no one is going to treat too seriously something he knows has come from German radio, when he gets the same story from someone else, he begins to think maybe there is something in it. We have got to keep our eyes open and recognise this form of organised sabotage of our united war effort.

Mutual Understanding

“A fact which emerges more and more plainly is the paramount need both for victory and after victory that the United States and the British Commonwealth and Empire should understand each other and get along together,” he continued. “You may sometimes feel sore that we in Britain judge unfairly something said or done in the United States. I have no doubt at times we do, but you will somej times find the same soreness on the British side. Take some of the talk one hears about Lend-Lease—that we ought to be deeply grateful to you and are not making an adequate return for all you have done. Of course the British people are, and always will be, grateful for all the help you have given under Lend-Lease. But they remember, too, that the Lend-Lease Act was most truly termed by its authors an.‘Act to promote the defence of the United States’ and that, while you were doing all that, they themselves were being bombed and killed and had the whole of the German might concentrated on them, only 20 miles away. “If the British Commonwealth had not stood firm in 1940 when many people thought we were down and out and perhaps not worth helping, there would be no Allied cause today and your freedom, with ours, would have disappeared.”