A CHALLENGING UTTERANCE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23930, 4 October 1939, Page 6

A CHALLENGING UTTERANCE

Mr Churchill's broadcast speech covering the first month of the war, which was relayed over a network of no fewer than 275 stations in North America alone, has been described by the New York Herald Tribune as "another superb example " of British war diplomacy, the moment chosen for its delivery and the quite exceptional quality of the speech itself may together be held largely to justify the high praise bestowed by such an important organ of American opinion. For the speech was an effort in the best tradition of its maker, charged with telling facts and resonant with conviction. Mr Churchill is an opponent whose fighting capacities, in the political sense, are respected as well as feared in the totalitarian countries, for he has made it his business in recent years persistently to warn the democracies against the menacing growth of false doctrine in Europe. And when he speaks on such a subject he leaves nothing to chance. As Mr A. G. Gardiner noted in him many years ago, he knows his case as he knows his speeches—word and letter perfect. In this instance Mr Churchill's case was briefly that the Allies are fighting this war against Nazism on their own terms and without regard for the subtle manceuvrings of those who began it. While Herr Hitler, in Berlin, was addressing himself to the task of perfecting the details of his much-heralded peace offensive, the First Lord of the Admiralty, in studied yet searing phrases, was proclaiming the determination of Great Britain and France to ignore all but the realities of the struggle into which they had been drawn. The British Government, he said, had given directions to prepare for at least a three years' war. But. he added, that did not mean that victory might not be gained in a shorter time —how soon depending on how long "Hitler and his group of gangsters, whose hands are

stained with blood and sticky with corruption, can keep their grip on the docile and unhappy German people." This war, Mr Churchill said, "began when he wanted it. It will end only when we are convinced that he has had enough." Therein is the answer to peace proposals dictated from Berlin and Moscow on the basis that what has been done in Poland cannot now be undone. Although Mr Churchill said what he had to say in his own audacious way, he spoke for a united Empire and a France pledged, as we ourselves are pledged, to end the reign of tyranny that has sought to refashion a continent according to the fanatical will of one man. Mr Churchill, it may be hoped, will be retained in the role that his inspiring speech suggests has fallen to him —that of interpreter to the Western world of the war's progress. None in the present Government is better equipped for the performance of such a vitalising task.