PREPARE FOR GERMAN INVASION

Evening Star, Issue 23679, 12 September 1940, Page 9

PREPARE FOR GERMAN INVASION

Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright

(Received September 12, at I 1 a.m.)]

RUGBY, September 1 I. Mr Churchill broadcast to the nation this evening, warning the people of the determination with which the enemy was pursuing his plans for an onslaught upon Britain, for which they therefore should prepare themselves with special pride and care to do their duty, and rallying their confidence with the account of Britain’s strength in arms and men and above all in the courage of which the citizens in the bombed areas in London had given such a shining example. Mr Churchill said; ’’ When 1 said in the House of Commons the other day that I thought it improbable that the enemy’s air attack in Sepember could be more than three times as great as in August I was not, of course, referring to barbarous attacks on civil population, but to the great air battle which is being fought out between our fighters and the German Air Force. You will understand that whenever the weather is favourable waves of German bombers, protected by fighters, often 300 and 400 at a time, surge over this island, 1 especially the promontory of Kent, in the hope of attacking military and other objectives by daylight. They are met by our fighter squadrons. The enemy is nearly always broken up and his losses average three to one in machines and six to one in pilots.

“ This effort of the Germans to secure daylight mastery in the air over England is, of course, the crux of the whole war.

“ So far it has failed conspicuously. It has cost the Germans very dear and we have felt stronger and are actually relatively a good deal stronger than when the hard fighting began in July. There is no doubt that Hitler is using up his fighter force at a very high rate, and that if he goes on for many more weeks he will wear down and ruin this vital part of his air force. That will give us a very great advantage. On the other hand, for him to try to invade this country without having secured mastery in the air would be a very hazardous undertaking. Nevertheless, all his preparations for invasion on a great scale are steadily going forward. Several hundred self-propelled barges are moving down the coasts of Europe from German and Dutch harbours to the ports of northern France from Dunkirk to Brest and beyond Brest to French harbours in the Bay of Biscay. Besides this, convoys of merchant ships in tens and dozens are being moved through the Straits of Dover into the Channel, dodging along from port to port under the protection of the new batteries the Germans have built on the French coast. There are now considerable gatherings of shipping in German, Dutch, Belgian, and French harbours all the way from Hamburg to Brest. Finally, there are some preparations made for ships to carry the invading force from Norwegian harbours. Behind these clusters of ships or barges there stand very large numbers of German troops awaiting the order to set out on the very dangerous and uncertain voyage across the seas. “ We cannot tell when they will try to come. We cannot be sure that they will try at all, but no one should blind himself to the fact that a heavy and full-scale invasion of this island is being prepared with all the usual German thoroughness and method, and it may be launched at any time now upon England, upon Scotland, upon Ireland, or upon all three.

Mr Churchill’s Warning INSPIRING CALL TO NATION Enemy Concentrating Ships and Men BATTLE FOR BRITAIN IMMINENT

“ If this invasion is going to he tried at all it does not seem that it can be long delayed. The weather may break at any time. Besides this it is difficult for the enemy to keep these gatherings of ships waiting about indefinitely while they are bombed every night by our bombers and very often shelled by our warships which are waiting for them outside. Therefore we must regard the next week or so as very important weeks in our history. They rank with the days when the Spanish Armada was approaching the Channel and Drake was finishing his game of bowls, or when Nelson stood between us and Napoleon’s grande armee at Boulogne. We read about all this in our history books, but what is happening now is on a far greater scale and of far more consequence to the life and future of the world and its civilisation than those brave old days. “ Every man and woman will, therefore, prepare themselves to do their duty whatever it may be with special pride and care.

“ Our fleets and flotillas are very powerful and numerous. Our air force is at the highest strength it has ever reached, and it is conscious of its proved superiority, not indeed in numbers, but in men and machines. “ Our shores are well fortified and strongly manned, and behind them we are ready to attach the invaders. We have a far larger and better equipped mobile army than we have ever had before. Besides this, we have more than 1,500,000 men of the Home Guard, who are just as much the soldiers of the regular army in status as the Grenadier Guards, and who are determined to fight for every inch of ground in every village in every street. “ It is with devout but sure confidence that I say “ let God defend the right.” These cruel, wanton, and indiscriminate bombings of London are, of course, part of Hitler’s invasion plans. He hopes by killing large numbers of civilians, including women and children, that he will terrorise and cow the people of this mighty- imper-

ial city, and make them a burden and anxiety to the government, and thus distract our attention unduly from the ferocious onslaught he is preparing. Little does he know the spirit of the British nation or the tough fibre of Londoners, whose forebears played a leading part in establishing parliamentary institutions, and who have been bred to value freedom far above their lives. “ This wicked man, the repository and embodiment of many forms of soul-destroying hatred, this monstrous product of former wrongs and shame, has now resolved to try to break our famous island race by a process of indiscriminate slaughter and destruction. " What he has done is to kindle a fire in British hearts here and all over the world which will glow long after all the traces of the conflagration he has caused in London have been removed. He has lighted a fire which will burn with a steady consuming flame until the last vestiges of Nazi tyranny have been burned out of Europe, and until the Old World and the New can join hands to rebuild the temples of man s freedom and man’s honour upon foundations which will not be soon or easily be overthrown. “ This is the time for all to stand together and hold firm as they are doing. I express my admiration for the exemplary manner in which all the A.R.P• services in London are being discharged, especially the fire brigade, whose work has been so heavy and also so dangerous. “ All the world that is still free marvels at the composure and fortitude with which the citizens of London are facing and surmounting the great ordeal to which they are subjected, the end or severity of which cannot yet be foreseen. It is a message of good cheer to our fighting forces on the seas, in the air, and in our waiting armies in all their posts and stations, that we are a people who will not flinch or weary of the struggle, hard and protracted though it will be, but that we shall rather draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival and of victorj' won not only for our own time, but for the long and better days that are to come.