TASK FOR THE PEOPLE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26349, 2 January 1947, Page 5

TASK FOR THE PEOPLE

RESTORATION OF PROSPERITY APPEAL TO BRITISH SPIRIT (Special correspondent.) (Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, Dec 30. “Britain’s comparative poverty need not be permanent, and so far as vulnerability to attack is concerned, I doubt if any nation, however uncouth its international manners or bad its ambitions, would now provoke a major war," said General Sir William Slim, who commanded the 14th Army in Burma, in a New Year's Eve broadcast to the people of Britain. General Slim said that the task of the pfeople in 1947 was to restore the prosperity and wealth of the country. To do this they must have pride in honest

work, comradeship, faith in themselves, and a willingness to put the welfare of the country before their own petty advantage. They might call these things the “Dunkirk spirit.” or what they really were—the old Christian virtues. Whenever the freedom of Britain and of the Western World had been threatened, it had been the sturdy commonsense and stubborn courage of the British people that had saved them. In 1947. the objective of the British nation must be the same as it had been in 1940—the survival of Britain and of all it stood for and had stood for in the freedom of body and mind for all men.