WAR OF LIBERATION

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 11 November 1942, Page 2

WAR OF LIBERATION

Campaigns in North Africa CHURCHILL EXPLAINS OUR AIMS Taste of Victory After Blood, Sweat and Tears (Rec. I I a.m.) Rugby, Nov. 10. “We come into North Africa shoulder to shoulder with the Americans to gain a vantage ground for a new front against Hitlerism, to cleanse the shores of Africa from tyranny, open the Mediterranean to our sea and air power and thus liberate the peoples of Europe. The two African undertakings east and west were a single strategic conception about which we are now justified in entertaining good and reasonable anticipations.” This declaration was made by Mr Churchill, speaking at Mansion House at the Lord Mayor’s Day luncheon.

The Prime Minister added: “In our wars episodes are usually adverse, but final results hitherto have been satisfactory. We have not so far in this war taken as many German prisoners as they have taken British, but those German prisoners will doubtless come in droves at the end just as they did last time. Now, instead of merely blood, tears, toil and sweat, we have a new experience—victory—a remarkable and definite victory. A bright gleam has caught the helmets of our soldiers and has cheered all our hearts. Generals Alexander and Montgomery have gained a glorious success. Rommel’s army has been defeated, routed and very largely destroyed as a fighting force.” DEADLY GRAPPLE This battle, added the Prime Minister, was not fought for the sake of gaining positions or so many square miles of desert territory, it was fought with the single idea of destroying the enemy’s armed force at the place where disaster must be most punishing and irrecoverable. Indians, Greeks and Czechoslovakians had rlayed a part among the land elements; the Americans had rendered invaluable service in the air, but the battle had been fought throughout almost entirely by men of British blood from Home and the Dominions on the one hand and by Germans on the other. The Italians were left to perish in the waterless desert as they were doing by tens of thousands. The fighting between the British and the Germans was extremely intense. In a deadly grapple the Germans had been outmatched and outfought with the very kind of weapons with which they had beaten down so many small peoples; also large,unprepared peoples. They had been beaten by the very technical apparatus on which they had counted to gain them world dominion. The Germans had received that measure of fire and steel they had so often meted out to others. JUSTICE GRIMLY REPAID “This is not the end; not even the beginning,” continued Mr Churchill “Henceforward Hitler’s Nazis will meet equally well-armed, perhaps even better armed troops. Henceforward they will have to face in many theatres that superiority in the air they so often used mercilessly against others. When I read of the desert coastal road crammed with flying German vehicles under the blasting of the R.A.F. attack I remember the roads in France crowded with helpless women and children, fleeing with their pitiful barrows of household goods, on whom such merciless cruelty was wreaked. I have a humane disposition but could not help feeling that what was happening, however grievous, was only justice grimly repaid. ROOSEVELT’S STRATEGY

“It will be my duty in the near future to give Parliament a full account of these operations. All I wish to say at present is that the victory already gained has given good prospects of becoming decisive and final, so far as the defence of Egypt is concerned.

“But this battle in Egypt, in itself so important, was designed and timed as a prelude and counterpart to the momentous interprise undertaken by the United States in the west and the Mediterranean. The enterprise is under the United States Command, but our Army, Air Force, and above all our Navy, are bearing an important share. President Roosevelt, who is Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of America, is the author of this mighty undertaking. In all of it I have been his active and ardent lieutenant.

“You read the declaration of President Roosevelt, solemnly endorsed by the British Government, of the strict respect which will be paid to the rights and interests of Spain and Portugal, both by America and Great Britain. To these countries our only policy is that they shall be independent, free, prosperous and at peace. Britain and the United States will do all they can to enrich the economic life of the Iberian peninsula. The Spaniards especially require and deserve peace for recuperation. FAITH IN FRANCE “Even now when misguided Frenchmen are firing on their rescuers, I am prepared to stake my faith that France will rise again While there are men like General de Gaulle and all those who follow him —and they are legion throughout France—and General Giraud; while there are men like that to stand forward in the name and cause of France my confidence in the future of France is sure. “For ourselves we have no wish but to see France strong with her empire gathered around her, and Al-sace-Lorraine restored. We covet no French possessions. We have no acquisitive designs or ambitions on North Africa or elsewhere. We have not entered this war for private gain or expansion, but only for honour and to do our duty in defending right. WE MEAN TO HOLD OUR OWN “Let me, however, make this clear in ease there should be anv mistake about it We mean to hold our own. I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. For that task, tf ever it were prescribed, someone else would have to be found.” Mr Churchill said he was proud to be a member of the vast Commonwealth and society of nations and communities gathered in and around the ancient British monarchy, without which the good cause might well have perished from the face of the earth. "Here we are and here we stand, a veritable rock of salvation in this drifting world.” Mr Churchill referred to the year when Britain stood alone, ’but those days, thank God,” he said, “are gone and we now move forward in a great gallant company. For our record we have nothing to fear and have no need to make excuses or apologies We seek in this war no territorial gain and no commercial favours. We wish to alter

no sovereignty or frontier for our benefit.

“We come into North Africa to effect the liberation of the peoples of Europe from the pit of misery into which they have been cast by their own improvidence and the brutal violence of the enemy. GREATER DESIGN “These two African undertakings in the east and west are part of a single strategical and political conception, and about which we are now justified in entertaining good and reasonable anticipations. But, taken together, they are the outset of a greater design, vast in its scope, honourable in its motive and noble in its aim, and, should British and American affairs continue to prosper in the Mediterranean the whole events will mean a new bond between the English-speaking peoples and a new Europe for the whole world.”—B.O.W.