EMPIRE AT WAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 January 1940, Page 5

EMPIRE AT WAR

UNITED AS NEVER BEFORE BROADCAST BY AUSTRALIAN HIGH COMMISSIONER. GERMAN PEOPLE MISLED BY PROPAGANDA. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Dav. 10.15 a.m.) RUGBY. "January 3. Tn a broadcast address, the .Australian High Commissioner (Mr S. JT. Bruce) said the question naturally arose why Australia, twelve thousand miles away from the conflict, had entered the war, pledging aid to her maximum capacity. Remarking that he was peculiarly fitted to answer the question. Mr Bruce said he had witnessed every move and effort to meet reasonable German claims and avert the catastrophe of war. Australia had pledged her utmost endeavour because she knew the Allies were fighting for those things which Australians believed made life worth living, and to free the world from the dominance of force and the constant fear of aggression. “Where Australia stands, there stand all the other Dominions of the British Empire,” Mi- Bruce said. Great efforts had been made to implant in German minds the idea that Germany had been reluctantly forced to fight in order to preserve German independence and the right to live. He doubted whether ever before there had been a comparable example of the deliberate misleading of a nation. “If the German people believe this propaganda, they will believe anything,” he added. German propaganda, he continued, had also tried to show that the Empire was not united in this war. If the .German people also believed this, Mr Bruce said, a rude awakening lay before them. He referred to the arrival of the Canadian forces, adding: “Important as it is, it is only a forerunner of the mighty land, and air forces now being mobilised and trained throughout the Empire.” After stating that the Empire had never before been so united, he mentioned the speeches of Allied leaders, from which, he said, a picture of peace aims could be constructed. He concluded: “We have also to prepare the way for a peace settlement which will secure for nations and peoples liberty, material progress and social justice. In this task we can rely upon the active participation and co-operation of all the principal neutral nations.