BRITAIN'S TASK

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24448, 6 November 1940, Page 8

BRITAIN'S TASK

KEEPING THE FUTURE SAFE NEW WORLD ENVISAGED TREMENDOUS OPPORTUNITIES (British Official Wireless) (United Press Association) (By Electric Telegraph— Copyright) RUGBY, Nov. 4. Discussing war aims in an Empire broadcast, the Under-secretary of State for War, Captain H. H. Balfour, said he believed one aim-was clear and universal to all—defeat of Nazi Germany—but the British ought not to confine themselves to saying that Nazism and all it stands for must be destroyed. “The young men of the H.A.F.— the youth of the British Commonwealth of Nations—are fighting to win a war which must secure the shape of the world to come,” he said. “We are fighting for a positive cause with a future, and not merely a negative cause with a past. We must never talk pr think as if we were trying to save some dusty old code of living which is on its last legs. I would like our young airmen to feel that the glorious achievement in which they are taking part is not merely a struggle to keep what we have. It is a struggle to keep the future safe. “Let the past take care of itself. Even though every material memorial of our past were effaced we know we are fighting for a just and mighty order which will still be possible in Britain and the Empire. Our cause does not depend upon the ghosts of lovely old London, which bombs may batter, but upon a living vitality which will build anew. It is not over the wicked vandalism of damaged St. Paul’s that we must weep—but rather over the death of even one young man who might have built a ri6w St.- Paul’s, ../> • “ When we use the. word, democracy it is -mot with thoughts of a mellow evening of days gone by, but of the dawn. of something so tremendous'in opportunities that its glare can dazzle our eyes. The young men of our Efnpire who are defending freedom for the world to-day are the ones to whom we must look in shaping the world to come. We shall have great need in peace, as in war, of their services.” /