WILL TO VICTORY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 120, 23 May 1941, Page 6

WILL TO VICTORY

PEOPLE OF ENGLAND

FLAME OF RESOLUTION

A COMMON GLORY

(P.A.) AUCKLAND. This Day. "In the long and glorious history of our race great fame has been won by armies and navies, by fighting forces, by generals and admirals whose names are recorded and whose portraits hang on walls, but this is the first war in which honour and glory belong not to a few men but are the honour and glory of an entire people," said the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr. Menzies, who delivered a stirring speech at a State dinner tendered him last night. The Acting Prime Minister, Mr. Nash, and the Minister of Supply, Mr. Sullivan, represented the Government. Mr. Menzies was accorded a warm reception.

Mr. Menzies spoke simply of the issues confronting the British Commonwealth, and showed clearly the magnitude of the menace by which the British peoples are confronted. He said he had no thought of defeat, but he was convinced that only the best that every man. woman, and child could give would suffice to win. GOOD AND VALIANT PEOPLE. To give his audience a picture of the I freedom with which the King moves among his people, especially those who have suffered most, Mr. Menzies told the story of his Majesty's visit to a blitzed area. A cheerful bystander slapped him or the shoulder and said, "Thank God for a good King," and his Majesty turned, put his hand on the man's shouHer. and said, "And thank God for a good people.", "We are going to win this war because we have a good people," Mr. Menzies said. "I could not have believed how valiant is the spirit of the common man." A strange and almost Divine thing was that in the back streets and slums of the English cities there were men and women who had almost nothing to lose, and who had been dealt with by life with the cruellest injustice; yet these were the people in whom the flame of resolution burned so fiercely that those who had seen it could never forget.

Mr. Menzies scorned any suggestion that these people were putting thfeir backs into winning the war because of the1 improved conditions they might expect afterwards.

"The people who are doing these things in Great, Britain and by their spirit are winning this war have already made their own place in the post-war world secure. I have encountered no thinking human being in Great Britain who does not realise that if the price of victory is poverty, and I think it is—and what is wrong with poverty provided it is the poverty of freedom?—then the business of statesmanship after the war is to see that poverty is honourably shared." GREATNESS OF SACRIFICE. The common people of Britain, and he used the word "common" in the ,same meaning as the House of Commons, these little people at whom before the German finger was pointed in scorn, were the greatest of all generations who had found a place in history. He said he could not help feeling there were no people in the world who could so magnificently have withstood the ordeal as the people of Groat Britain. "We have read of them, but we do not even begin to know what they have gone through," he continued. "We see people in their thousands working cheerfully, magnificently, and saying with enthusiasm: 'Yes, we have had a bad time, but production was 20 per cent, higher last week.' "In our own countries we could do twice what we are doing and still stop short of the sacrifice being made by the people of Britain," Mr. Menzies said. In those '-ities where death -had fallen so suddenly that it had been necessary to have great community funerals of hundreds of unidentifiable fellow-citizens, he would defy anyone to find a single person who would call a halt or sue for terms.

"Defeat," he said — "the word has not been heard in any of those towns. The spirit of the people is such that they say, 'If everyone else in my house has gone into a common grave I am still here. I must work and sweat because this is not going to happen again to my people if I can help it.'

"We have one great inferiority to our foe," he said. "We are inferior in machines. We are not inferior in men. We are not inferior in spirit. In the long run spirit wins, but it wins more quickly when the man who has it has the instruments to fight the foe." Mr. Menzies said that Germany had been preparing for years for 'war, amassing weapons of great quality and in enormous quantity. The British went along comforting themselves that something^ would happen, concentrating their attention on raising general standards, but suddenly found themselves confronted by an enemy so immensely superior in machine power that he had inflicted defeat after defeat, and had not finished yet.

"YOU WILL NEVER MUDDLE THROUGH."

Such an enemy would not be defeated by saying we had a just cause, nor by comforting ourselves that we would muddle through.

"I denounce this nonsense about muddling through," Mr. Menzies said. "You will never muddle through to victory against Germany in this war. Not a scrap of individual comfort or standard of living matters a hoot until we have won this war. If we have to work ourselves to the bone to produce tanks, guns, and aircraft, let us give up argument and work ourselves to the bone."

The enemy already sat astride Europe and tomorrow might sit astride half the world. lie had gathered up a great army of skilled workers, many of them in France.

"I met General do Gaulle several Umcs in England, and formed a most profound respect for his character and outlook; but France today presents perhaps the supreme tragedy of history, governed largely by men who preferred power, and as they ,saw it the security of German authority, to the individuality for which France stood. I believe in France, because I believe in the spirit of the French people."

Yet Frenchmen in unoccupied France today must work to live and produce, and their work was available to Germany. Britain and the Dominions, aided by the untapped resources of America, could out-machine the foe, but how long would it take? Time was the essence of the contract. "We want a kind of single-purpose league throughout the world. We must make up our minds that there is one job in hand, and one only. If every man, woman, and child devotes every ounce to winning the war. it will be enough. But nothing less will do.

"I have a tremendous impression of the power, skill, ingenuity, and diabolical cleverness of this evil thing we are fighting for the world that comes after us.

"I am merely putting into imperfect words the radiant spirit that shines in the darkest back street of Binning-