BRITAIN'S PLIGHT GRAVE

Chronicle (Levin), 30 April 1946, Page 5

BRITAIN'S PLIGHT GRAVE

: Press Assn.

«R. CHURCHILL'S CHARGES ACAINST LABOUR

By Telegraph

,-Copyright

Received Tuesday, 12.30 p.m. LONDON, April 20. Declaring that Britain's plight was one of singular gravity and insecurity, Mr. Churchill, in a speefeh at Edinburgh, eharged the Attlee Government with, firstly, tardy demobilisation ; secondly, increased lush and lavish expenditure ; thirdly, failure to allow the production of sufficient con- ' ^umer goods; fourthly, failure regarding the housing programme ; fifthly, disturbance and ehfeebloffiferit of industry by nalionalisation schemes and threats of it-; and, sixthly, a campaign of hatred and vilification on the part of half the nation against the other half. Mr. Churchill said "there was never in human history a community so numerous in position and at once so magnificent and so precarious." Mistakes now would dissipate the means whereby more than half the population lived, ehding in the abridgment of from one-third to one-half of the population and final extinction of Britain as the centre of the widest, most cxperienced and most tolerant association of people sihce the fall of the Roman Empire. Mr. Churchill, referring to the months when invasion seemed near, said : ''I do not hesitate to say that I feel the same kind of anxiety now about oitr life and fortunes as I did in those dark but glorious days.M A prolonged period of restriction and austerity, which the Government had asked the public to endure, would have occurred even if a National Coalition had been in power, he added, but some of it was unnecessary and not concerned with national objectives but only Socialist party ihterests and doctrines. — - ■ — ■ - ■