A WONDERFUL TRIBUTE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 58, 23 March 1943, Page 7

A WONDERFUL TRIBUTE

"THERE'LL ALWAYS BE AN

ENGLAND''

(By Dorothy Thompson, noted American Journalist) Listen, brothers. This, is. a war against Japan and Nazi Germany. Get this' straight. The' British, are our Allies. 1 read all the interviews with the American citizens who came from Penang. The British didn't evacuate the Americans properly. The British didn't have anti-aircraft guns. The British didn't this and* didn't that. The; lady with the Siamese cat had plenty to say, as li remember. Listen, sister: You got home alright, didn't you? You anil the Siamese cat. Did it ever occur to you to offer one prayer of gratitude to God. If you weren't properly protected, what have you ever done to protect anybody else? Listen, sister: You get busy and join the air-raid precaution service. Get busy. There's a lot. to do right here. And if things don't go well right here, whom will you blame. The British? Did you ever look at the map? There are seventy-odd million AngloSaxon members of the Englishspeaking world outside the United States and they arc. scattered from Land's End to Hell and Gone. Not quite two years, ago they had the Germans at the Channel and there weren't any anti-aircraft guns in Britain, either. Forty-seven million people on a little island' and they could starve in a fortnight. And for a year and a half they held the world at bay alone! That, doesn't make any impression on you? Fifty thousand of them died right in England.: I can't remember that anybody whimpered when the King of Bel-r gium made a separate peace. Paul Reynaud cried "treason.'' Churchill said, "We reserve judgment." Did you ever read London's second, inaugural address? Take a look | at it again. "The judgments of the ! Lord are true and righteous altogether.'" Listen to the Vichyites in New York: "Britain let us down." 1 Not one mumbling word from Britain about the France that hand- I ed over everything to Hitler. Not ' a word, only faith in France when even France didn't have any. You'tl think, to listen to some of vou, that you Avant Britain to lose. Careful, careful. Be quiet, and pray. It took Britons and Hollanders, Frenchmen and Americans hundreds of years to open this globe for white men. In a few weeks hundreds of years may be swept into the ashcan and the Japs have a straight, open line from India to Suez. You don't think much of the British Empire? No? Well, brother, if Britain goes, write linis over the Western civilisation. Or do you think, perhaps, that America can carry it. alone? You don't know what England means, my friend. England is very tired and England is old. Yet. though it slay me, I tell you that this England is the last refuge of the civilised, soul. Pray for England, I say. England, England, so proud. And England who knows humility. Have you heard the British say a word against the Americans? Did they crow over Pearl Harbour? Did they rush into print to talk of our smugness and complacency? Did you ever have an Englishman for a friend? Did that friend ever let you down? I In the hour of her greatest distress, her greatest disaster, Iv an American, write these lines to England and I say to England in spite of Singapore: "I sing with you, 'Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free.' And I I sing with you, 'There'll Always be an England, and England will be Free."'