CRITICAL PERIOD

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 9 May 1927, Page 5

CRITICAL PERIOD

IN ENGLISH POLITICS

FIGHT AGAINST MOSCOW DOCTRINES

(SPEECH BY I.ORD BIRKENHEAD

(By Electrio Telegraph—Copyright) (Published ia “The Times.")

LONDON, 7th May.

Lord Birkenhead, addressing the Southampton Chamber of Commerce, said: “We are living in a critical period of English politics. The next two years will inevitably determine the Empire’s and England’s fortune, possibly for half a century. The election ahead is the most critical ever held in England’s histoiy discriminating between men believing in sanity, sobriety, and continuity of English life and those believing in Moscow’s fever-stricken, malignant doctrines. There is nobody in the Government to-day who is not making immense sacrifices in order to- remain a member of it. If they undertake these tasks surely (hey have some right to ask something of the people. I am satisfied that England’s heart is sound. The nation’s great spirit is available to repel .Moscow, but it will not bo available unless men who hitherto have not participated in politics come to our assistance.’

GENERALS AND TANKS

Attending to mechanisation of the army Lord Birkenhead said it was the despised politicians who forced on unconvinced generals the power and resources of mechanical warfare. The only request made to the army was that they should not employ the weapon prematurely. They derided it. in every way and disparaged it, but ns soon as the tanks were delievered they prematurely and -uselessly < exposed the supreme weapon, whjch if safeguarded and husbanded might have won the final battle of the war. Sir William Robertson in his book made a solitary indifferent reference to tanks, which had revolutionised warfare, yet he at the most critical moment was Chief of the General Staff.