OLD PROPHECY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4534, 9 February 1942, Page 8

OLD PROPHECY

UTTERED BACK IN 1854 !■ ■ 1 As long ago as 1854 a forecast of the parts which England and America might play in a world war such as today’s was made by General G. Watson Webb, of the United States of America. His prophecy has been published in the “British-American Cooperator,” organ of the New Zealand section of the British-American Cooperation Movement, and is contained in the following extract from his speech : “The contingency to which I allude as being the only one which could prompt an interference in European affairs is, I sincerely hope, very far distant, but it is one which should never be lost sight of in England, and which may ultimately be averted altogether by its being constantly kept before the world—l mean a combination of the continent (of Europe) at some future day against England as the great embodiment of constitutional liberty in Europe.

“That day may come ! how soon, if ever. He alone knows in whose hands are the destinies of nations; but come when it may, our interests and our feelings will alike combine to make us come to the rescue. We shall come; it may be from a conviction that, in fighting your battles, we are contending for the cause of constitutional liberty. Our plea or our excuse may !be self-preservation; but in such a I contingency come we will; and be asj sured that the youtllful giant—for we I shall be a giant before that day arI rives—will not come less willingly or strike less effectively because his strength will be put forth on behalf of a parent who, if she was not always a kind mother, gave to us our Anglo-Saxon blood, and sent us forth imbued with her laws, her literature, and her love of constitutional liberty.”