BRITISH MORALE

Evening Star, Issue 23696, 2 October 1940, Page 8

BRITISH MORALE

DESCRIBED BY A PLAIN-SPOKEN WORD I don’t like this word “ morale ’• that we hear so much of nowadays. What it means is clear enough; bull there’s a good old plain-spoken English word I’d like to hear used instead—namely, “ guts.” When anyone remarks that 1 ‘ the morale of this country is high,” we all know what is meant, but it sounds more natural tt» say, “This country’s got guts,” and X don’t see why we shouldn’t say it (writes W. A. Sinclair, in the B.R:C. ‘ Listener ’). Well, this country undoubtedly ha* got “guts”; hut there’s a point we ought to be thinking over now, about the way this quality comes out in us, and the times when it comes_ out. It always comes out when things get really serious The way it does thi* has always puzzled foreigners. This ia the real underlying reason why our wars have never ended the way the enemy expected them to epd—the wav they would have ended but for that quality. One of the great Continental statesmen of 100 years ago once said, somewhat sourly, “ The British always win in the end because they are so stupid that they do not understand when they are beaten.” At Waterloo, he said, the British ought to have been beaten f but they were so stupid—so he called it—that they did not understand that they ought to have given in and run away, as any really intelligent army would have done in the circumstances. So thev didn’t run away, and they wont Waterloo, and thev finished Nainoleon. Well. ,T don’t think we would call th"t quality “ stupidity,” but w-hate'-er it * called, there it is. And it’s still here, the same to-day as ft was then.