BRITISH MORALE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4535, 11 February 1942, Page 8

BRITISH MORALE

SECRET OF SUCCESS “The British, who never know when they are beaten, develop their best morale when they are fighting with their backs to the wall; the French are magnificent in victory but panicky in defeat; the Germans fight courageously as long as there is any hope of victory, but collapse completely when that hope begins to fade; the Russians, used to misery, fight stubbornly until they die in their tracks; Americans, who proved themselves to be last-ditch fighters in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and reckless daredevils in the last war, to-day can so little conceive of defeat that they find it difficult even to realize their danger in a wartorn world; the Japanese brought up ir. the Shinto and Samurai cults, which teach them to defy death for the sake of future deification, are among the bravest fighters on earth. But the Japanese also pride themselves on their common sense, based on intuition rather than on reasoned argument. Because of this they never have lost a war; they either knew when to retreat in the face of overwhelming odds before war had broken out, as they did during

the German-Russian-French intervention following the Sino-Japanese conflict of 1894-95, or else they end the war while the ending is still good, as they did during the RussoJapanese war.” —Mr Otto Tolischus, Tokio correspondent of the “New York Times.”