Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1943. A LEADER AND HIS PEOPLE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 December 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1943. A LEADER AND HIS PEOPLE.

JN all parts oE the Empire and in many countries besides deep concern has been awakened by the illness of Mr Churchill and there are as widespread good wishes and hopes for his speedy recovery—hopes that will be brightened by the news of the Prime Minister’s progress given in the latest bulletin received at time of writing. An appreciation of all that Mr Churchill’s leadership means and has meant to the nations of the British Commonwealth and to its Allies does not, however, entail approval of the extravagant language used by the “New York Times” in an editorial in the course of which it said:— Having so much personal courage he is able to impart it to others. In the dark days after Dunkirk one of the few reasons why the British were able to keep up their hopes was that Mr Churchill was leading them. Of the spirit of inflexible and undaunted resolution that animates the British Prime Minister there is ample proof, but it is far enough from being just to the people lie leads to say that at any time they have been courageous only in the extent to which courage has been imparted to them by their leader. Mr Churchill himself no doubt 'would be the first to affirm that any leader would be helpless and impotent but for the ability of those to whom his call is addressed to respond to it with a. strength and resolution akin to and in tune -with his own. Ho indeed affirmed that and more when he said, in a speech in July, 1940, only a few months after he had told the British people he had nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat: — But all depends now upon the whole life-strength of the British i’ace in every part of the world and of all our associated peoples and of all our well-wishers in every land, doing their utmost day and night, giving all, daring all, enduring all —to the utmost —to the end. This is no war of chieftains oi’ princes, of dynasties or national ambition; it is a war of peoples and causes. It would hardly be possible to rate too highly Mr Churchill’s leadership of his nation in the most terrible ordeal and emergency it has ever known. That leadership has been made possible, however, in a very great degree by his understanding and appreciation of what is best in the spirit and character of the British people and of the indomitable quality they have exhibited, not only in warlike service on land and sea and in the air, but in what he has called their “grim but gay” endurance of bombing and of all the numberless perils and hardships the war has brought upon them.