THE NORTHERN ADVOCATE Registered for transmission through the Post as a Newspaper. SATURDAY OCTOBER 1947. Britain's Chief Asset

Northern Advocate, 4 October 1947, Page 4

THE NORTHERN ADVOCATE Registered for transmission through the Post as a Newspaper. SATURDAY OCTOBER 1947. Britain's Chief Asset

The adage that desperate diseases call for desperate remedies may provide some comfort to British people when contemplating the expedients to which Britain has been forced in her endeavour to regain the economic stability she lost when giving her all to save liberty-loving nations from Nazi domination.

At the same time there will linger speculation whether “desperate diseases call for desperate remedies’’ is not to be linked with another saying that “the cure is (sometimes) worse than the disease ”

These thoughts are prompted by a cabled report that the British Cabinet, after discussions with service chiefs, has decided to make further cuts in the armed forces of Britain in order to save millions sterling. The extent of the cuts is not to be announced before Parliament reassembles, but it is not pleasant to read that the Paymaster-General said in the course of a speech: “The Government has by no means made the last announcement on reduction of the armed forces ”

It is also not pleasant to read that “we shall be withdrawing all along the line,” even if the Paymaster--1 General intended this remark to lie -applied to Palestine only. However desperate may be the remedy Britain is proposing to use, it should be remembered that She took an even more nauseous draught when she threw everything into the fight to save her life and that of the world at large.

Her desperate remedy proved effective, for life was saved. Now has come the period of convalescence, when, in an effort to restore strength and vigour, Britain must undergo treatment which she

would not tolerate if its imperative necessity were not obvious. It is at a time such as the present when, as Mr Amery said in an inspiring appeal a few days ago, there is required the spirit which made Britain great in the Elizabethan days. There need be little fear that the spirit of the Elizabethan age is dead, it may have been slumbering, or perhaps dulled by a combination of circumstances, but dead —no! Convalescent Britain, determined to regain normal health, may rely upon the practical sympathy of her sons and daughters in every quarter of the globe, and, hard though the row to be hoed may be, the British people will win through. That is the message which Sir Patrick Duff, United Kingdom High Commissioner in New Zealand, delivered in a recent speech, when he said:

“There will be obstacles and setbacks, such as the one Britain is ju.fi; encountering, and the aches and pangs of a new era may afflict grievously aspects of our economy hitherto regarded as basic, but there is something still more basic 'n Britain, which, for all humankind, is the motive force of all vitality, economic or political. “It is the mainspring of all progress and revival. "It is beyond the shifting sands of change, and lies deep and unassailed in the unfathomable mines of the British character. “It is the stuff called courage! “The chief requirement in the socalled ‘brave new world’ is going to be bravery, and whatever Britain is short of. depend upon it. she is never going to be short of that!”