HOW GORS WAR?

Waikato Times, Volume 130, Issue 21655, 16 February 1942, Page 6

HOW GORS WAR?

COMPARISON MADE REVIEW BY CHURCHILL DEBITS AND CREDITS INTRUSION BY JAPANESE t (Official Wireless) (Received Feb. 16, 3.15 p.m.) RUGBY. Feb. 15 “Compared with those days of 1940, when all the world except ourselves thought we were down and out for ever, the situation the President and I surveyed in August, 1941, was considerably better,” said Mr Churchill in his broadcast. “Still, when you looked at it bluntly and squarely, with the United States neutral and fiercely divided, with the Russian armies falling back with grievous losses, with German military power triumphant and unscathed, with the Japanese menace assuming uglier shape each day, it certainly seemed a very bleak and anxious scene. Chances of Survival “How do matters stand now? Taking it all in all, are our chances of survival better or worse than in August, 1941? How is it with the British Empire or the Commonwealth of Nations? Are we up or down? What has happened to the principles of freedom and decent civilisation for which we are fighting? Are they making headway or are they in greater peril? “Let us take the rough with the smooth. Let us put the good and bad side by side and let us try to see exactly where we are. The first and greatest of the events is that the United States is now unitedly and whole-heartedly in the war with us. This Time as Comrades “The other day I crossed the Atlantic again to see Mr Roosevelt. This time we met not only as friends but as comrades, standing side by side and shoulder to shoulder in a battle for dear life and dearer honour. in a common cause and against a common foe. “ When I survey and compute the power of the United States and its vast resources, and feel that now they are in it with us, with the British Commonwealth cf Nations, all altogether however long it lasts, till death or victory, I cannot believe that there is any fact in the whole world which can compare with that.

“ That’s what I dreamed of, aimed at and worked for. and now it has ccme to pass. But there is another fact, in some way more immediately elfective. The Russian armies have not been defeated. They have not been tom to pieces. The Russian peoples have not been conquered or destroyed. Leningrad and Moscow have not been taken. Russians in Field

“ The Russian armies are in the field. They are not holding the line ot the Urals or the line of the Volga. They are advancing victoriously, driving the foul invader from that native soil which they have guarded so bravely and loved so well. “ More than that. For the first time they have broken the Hitler legend. Instead of the victorious and abundant booty which Hitler and his hordes gathered in the west, he has found in Russia so far only disaster, failure, the shame of unspeakable crimes, and the slaughter or loss of vast numbers of German soldiers and an icy wind that blows across the Russian snows.”

“We are struggling hard in the Libya desert, where perhaps another serious battle will soon be fought,” Mr Churchill said. “We have to provide for the safety and order of liberated Abyssinia, of conquered Eritrea, of Palestine, of liberated Syria and reedemed Syria, and our new ally Persia. A ceaseless stream of ships with men and materials has flowed from this country for a year and a half to build up and sustain our armies in the Middle East, which guard these vast regions on either side of the. JJile barrier. “We had to do our best to give substantial aid to Russia. We gave it. in her darkest hour, and we must not fail in our undertakings now. How then in this posture, gripped and held and battered as we are, could we have provided for tho safety of the Far East. Always this thought overhung our minds. Two Tremendous Facts

“Here then, are two tremendous fundamental facts which will make victory possible in a form never before possible,” said Mr Churchill. “But there is another heavy and terrible side to the account which must be set in the balance against these inestimable gains.

“Japan has plunged into war and is ravaging the beautiful, fertile, prosperous ahd densely populated lands of the Far East. It would never have been in the power of the British while fighting Germany and Italy —nations long hardened and prepared for war—while fighting in the North Sea and in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, to defend the Pacific and the Far East single-handed against the onslaught of the Japanese. “We have only just been able to keep our heads above water at home Only by a narrow margin have we brought in the food which keeps us alive and supplies without which we cannot wage war. Only by so little have we held our own in the Nile Valley and the Middle East. “The Mediterranean is closed and all our transports have to go round the Cape of Good Hope, each ship making only three voyages in a year. Not a ship, not an aeroplane, not a tank, not an anti-tank gun or an anti-aircraft gun has stood idle. Everything we have has been deployed either against the enemy or awaiting his attack. ”