Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2, 1947. SPEAK UP FOR BRITAIN

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 13, 2 April 1947, Page 4

Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2, 1947. SPEAK UP FOR BRITAIN

I READ yesterday that 4,000,000 men have been releasedfrom the Services since June, 1945. What has happened to their tongues? asks Warwick Charlton, who founded and edited the Services newspaper “Eighth Army News,” “Tripoli Times” and “Crusader.” What has happened to the resolutions we made that, when we got back, we would tell the people at home the truth? Wherever we were—in Italy, Africa, Western Europe or South-East Asia —we saw conditions at first hand. And we all said: “We will tell them about this when we get home.” What are the things we were going to tell them? I will jog your memory.

EGYPT. Today we read that we are being thrown out of Egypt. The Union Jack has already been hauled down in the Citadel. Egyptian students march and counter-march because we are slow, in their opinion to leave the country which we protected in wartime against the Germans and the Italians. Before we saw Egypt we imagined that student demonstrations expressed the will for freedom of a people downtrodden by the British. When we got there we found you could hire a mob of Egyptians to demonstrate against anything for a few coppers. We also discovered that most of the 16,000,000 Egyptians have to exist on a shilling a day. But when the British Government wanted to raise the pay of the labourers it was the Egyptian businessmen who protested. And which soldier who has ever been there really believes that he wasn’t fleeced of his Army pay by * the Egyptian shopkeepers? The thing, though, that struck us most of all was the inhumanity of the Egyptian ruling class to their own people. Now Britain is handing over Egypt to these feudal bosses. Its time you and I said something about it. We vowed we would. It is time we answered the idealists with cottonwool brains who always see Britain as the oppressor. Did we sweat and fight in the desert for years to throw away the good Britain has done for the people of Egypt as though it was so much waste? Why don’t we tell our people at home the things we learned?

ITALY. Take Italy. The things we learned there! How easily, for example, a Fascist could become a life-long nonFascist within a few hours —minutes even—if the Allied armies were near enough. How well I remember an old Italian printer in Tripoli whose talk made me think that all Italians were against war at heart. On the day we finally defeated the Germans and Italians in Africa I saw him go over to the corner of his printing room in tears. I saw what caused his tears. Set up in big type in Italian and covered in dust were the words: “Alexandria is ;Ours.” The headline had waited for the day of enemy victory, and now that he saw all was lost for the Fascists and Nazis he tipped the type over with sorrow and regret.

INDIA. And what about those of us who were in India? There never was a country where good British intentions have been so much corrupted. We have tried to give them a British code of law, justice and fair play. But -we have also seen witnesses outside the law courts waiting to be hired by the highest bidder. We know who is most unkind to the Indian—the Indian himself. . . . During the great famine in Bengal, when hundreds of thousands of Indians died, the British soldier on the spot knew that Indian merchants had cornered rice and were unmoved when thousands died. While this was happening many Indians and people at home were throwing the blame on Britain. . . .

GERMANY. Rivers of tears are being shed for the unfortunate Germans, who would have wiped us out of existence. Remember how sick you were when the first pictures of Belsen came to your weapon pit and when you saw at firsthand the wickedness of the Germans? You were going to tell them at home all right. Well, what’s happened? The blame for empty bread bins in Germany is being manoeuvred on Britain. I believe it is up to us to keep a little balance against the fantastic forgetfulness of what brought ruin to Europe. The people who drag this nation’s name in the mud are always articulate. Speak up for Britain !—N.Z. Frontiersman.