GREAT WAR EFFORT

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 183, 30 April 1940, Page 8

GREAT WAR EFFORT

Newfoundlanders’ Service (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, April 28. Referring to the arrival in England last Thursday of fighting forces from Newfoundland, the newspaper “Observer” comments that, though it was not a relatively large contingent, it was in some ways the most significant of any. Newfoundland, though the oldest, was the smallest and poorest of the Dominions, with a population under 300,000 and with a hard climate and infertile soil. Had they said their own troubles were enough to cope with and professed only academic sympathy with the Allies, who could have wondered? “But what do we find?” asks the “Observer.” “Fewer in numbers than the inhabitants of Lambeth or Islington, Newfoundlanders have claimed a place in every department of the war. Thousands are enrolled in the Navy, some won distinction in the Air Force, and the men who arrived on Thursday will form an artillery unit of their own. “Other thousands who are engaged in logging in the British woodlands complain only that they have not been allowed to substitute' service in arms for the employment in which their technical skill is so valuable. “None of these men is serving the Allied cause for any reason but his own choice. Individuals were under no compulsion to come. They were here because they feel that the battle is for liberty, that the Empire is embarked on a glorious enterprise, and that the honour and satisfaction of sharing it are due to themselves.”