HIGH TRIBUTE TO THE BRITISH BY AMERICAN AUTHOR

Wanganui Chronicle, 16 February 1949, Page 5

HIGH TRIBUTE TO THE BRITISH BY AMERICAN AUTHOR

LONDON, Feb. 15 (Recd. 6pm).— “Let no one think that the British are down and out,” says John Gunther, noted American journalist, in a concluding article on “Inside Europe Today,” published by the New York “Herald Tribune.”

“It is not,” he continues, “merely that the most of relevant statistics prove a degree of economic recovery that most experts would not have dreamed possible a year or two ago. What is more important is the atmosphere. The British have doggedness, cheerfulness, self reliance, and, above all, an instinct for essential unity and an instinct for survival that put the people of almost every other nation to shame. The hardships they bear are almost beyond belief (and they grumble plenty too), but they are very far indeed from being down and out. Indeed, in a curious way, the disciplines they have been forced to undergo seem to have given them augmented strength.” Gunther also comments that though the British are much nearer to Russia than the United States they are much less frightened. They think it almost inconceivable there should be war. “There is infinitely less war talk in London than New York,” he writes. “They feel that the best—perhaps in the long run the only—way to beat Communism is by reform. The British people do not want war, and they don’t want Communism. What they want is continuing reform as the best security against both, and they will demand a Government that gives it to them.”—Special N.Z.P.A*. Correspondent.