The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1942. “KEEP RIGHT ON”

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 16, 14 October 1942, Page 4

The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1942. “KEEP RIGHT ON”

In his first speech since his statement to the House of Commons on the results of his mission to Moscow, the British Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, has devoted considerable attention to the enemy’s-state of mind as reflected in recent utterances by the Nazi leaders.’ So far as the war situation in general is concerned, he finds no cause for anxiety, and in regard to the war at sea in particular, good grounds for believing, that the worst of the U-boat menace may have passed. It is, however, his view of the future prospects for the Allies, and the outlook for the enemy, fliat readers will find most interesting and heartening. Mr. Churchill, as we are all aware, is not given to optimistic utterance unless with very good reason. When he tells us that “the light is broadening on the track, and the light is brightening, too,” we may assume with some confidence that he has substantial material for this hopeful estimate of the situation. There is a very different note in this latest speech from that struck in those delivered recently by Hitler, Goering, and Ribbentrop, and described by Mr. Churchill as “the dull, low, whining note of fear.” The war has now reached a stage when the psychological factors are beginning to tell. If the Prime Minister s diagnosis of the German leaders’ state of mind is sound —it. is a diagnosis no doubt •reached from a close study of the full text of their recent utterances —the conviction beginning to possess Hitler and his associates is that Germany faces ultimate defeat. Not only that, but the consequences of that defeat to themselves must also be filtering into their minds. If that is really the case, it must inevitably happen that this state of mind will communicate itself to their following, and finally to the German nation as a whole. Hitler had no difficulty in sustaining the ardour of the German people for war and conquest as long as he was winning easy victories, but as the conflict became prolonged, and the prospect of the final decision more remote, he has had to whip up their zeal by warnings of what would happen to them if they were defeated. Mr. Churchill has been quick to perceive this change in the psychology of the German situation, and his analysis of it has made his Edinburgh speech particularly telling. But he is insistent, nevertheless, on the essential requirements of victory for the United Nations. In the balance of accounts, we have reached, he warns us, a stern and sombre moment in the war, one which calls ‘ for firmness of spirit and constancy of soul in high degree.” We have to keep right on” to the end of the road, without slackening of effoit, without wavering of purpose, till the enemy on all fronts is finally and decisively defeated. The verse he quoted front a populai song by Sir Harry Lauder —reprinted in the “Thoughts of the Day column of this issue—strikes the right note. Let us apply the moral of it to our everyday spirit and actions.