CANADA IN WAR

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20087, 6 November 1939, Page 5

CANADA IN WAR

FIGHT FOR IDEALS DECENT WORLD ORDER NAZISM’S EVIL CREED MR. CRERAR’S BROADCAST (Elec. Tel. Copyright—United Press Assn.) (British Oflici.'d Wireless.) Reed. 9 a.m. RUGBY, Nov. 4. The leader of the Canadian delegation to the Empire War Conference, Mr. T. A. Crerar, in a broadcast, recalled that his last visit to England was on tlie occasion of the coronation when Britain was a scene of peace and happiness. Now he saw Britain at war, but as always calm and resolute, and he paid a tribute to the spirit of tin: British peoples which would triumph once again over the difficulties and dangers.

"In this war we in Canada are with you as you are with us to the end. We are fighting not merely because of a sentimental impulse to come to the help of the Mother Country in her hour of need,” he continued.

"That feeling is strong, but it could not alone account for the dedication of the strength of spirit of Canada to meet the challenge of conflict. To a great part of Canada, the United Kingdom is not the Mother Country. Approximately half of the people ot the Dominion are of non-Anglo-Saxon stock. Every Race and People “We are made up of every race and every people—the French who, without emigration from old France, have in the last 200 years increased from 50,000 to 3,500,000, Scandinavian, Italian, Ukrainian, Polish and even German—German Canadians who arc loyal to the best that is in Germany and are for that reason joining with other Canadians in the light against the debasing creed of Nazism."

The Canadian nation would see tho struggle through because they were lighting for their own ideals and existence.

Canada was not a colony coming to the aid of the Mother Country, but “a Slate conscious of the help that it can give in the struggle for the maintenance of decent world order."

Since 1914 Canada had grown from a colonial State to equal partnership in the British commonwealth and came into the war as a result of a free decision of sovereign Parliament —a decision later reaffirmed by the results of the election in the second largest province. Co-operation was full and free because Canada knew that the British nations were only forced to fight after all efforts for a peaceful settlement had been exhausted.

Fight Against Evil

The fight was against the very spirit of evil in government rounded on brute force and.the negation of every moral and spiritual value. There could only be one choice for Canada, who stood with Britain for ideals founded on liberty and tolerance.

The war must be fought through to a just and victorious peace and, to that end, Canada would make a worthy contribution. In return for tlie joint sacrifices and with the lesson of the years between 1918 and 1939 still in memory, “we may tiiis time not merely defeat tlie enemy but, on that defeat, lay the foundation of a new society—-one where war will be outlawed as the barbarity it is, where, instead of the Nazi dream of a world composed of brutal, bellicose despotism, there wit! be a world of free self-governing peoples willing, if necessary, to surrender certain of their sovereign Powers in tlie interest of the peace and prosperity of the whole international community."