FOR FREEDOM

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 126, 30 May 1942, Page 5

FOR FREEDOM

BRITAIN'S WAR PART

AN AMERICAN REMINDER

"One still sometimes hears word-of-mouth suggestions, or sees them in Fascistically inclined publications, that the United States is being induced by Great Britain to make a disproportionate contribution to the war," states an editorial in the Christian Science Monitor. Such Axis-aiding talk ran into factual refutation in a radio address of Lord Halifax which told something of what the beleaguered island fortress, Britain, is putting into the war.

"For instance the British Ambassador to the United States, disclosed that for months past no less than 80 per cent of Britain's total military production, and every soldier for whom shipping space was available, have been sent overseas.

"One wonders how many of those few Americans who spread disparaging remarks about the British would like to trade places with an average civilian on the British Isles and make his contribution to the war by standards prevailing there.

How would the critic like to be closely rationed as to the clothing he can buy, get around on seven gallons of gasoline a month with the prospect of losing that in July, pay 20 per cent of a 1600-dollar family income in taxes, be limited to approximately a pound of meat a person a week with little fish or poultry obtainable, get two to five eggs a month, half a pound of sugar a week, and do without green vegetables, fruit, or chocolate?

"These are the circumstances under which Britain is giving up every possible ton of its shipping to carry supplies or men to the far battlegrounds of Russia, the East and Near East instead of more food for Britain itself.

"Americans may well remember that Great Britain was shouldering the burden of the war, largely alone, for two years before the United States became a belligerent. "When Americans dig as deeply for war sacrifices as Britons are doing, the war will be well-nigh won. And by that time they will be little disposed to quibble about who is doing more, or for whom, but probably will be content to sum it up with saying, 'Britain is fighting freedom's fight—and so is America.' "