BOREDOM ANTIDOTE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20103, 24 November 1939, Page 12

BOREDOM ANTIDOTE

CHURCHILL’S ADDRESS LIKE IRON TONIC LONDON, Nov. 13. The zest and the relish with which tlie First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Winston Churchill, in a broadcast yesterday evening rousingly jeered at the Nazis in one of the most provocative statements ever delivered by a British statesman in war-time, hasbeen like an iron tonic to the nation. It is proving the greatest antidote yet administered to the boredom against which both the Queen and Mr. Churchill warned the nation.

Mr. Churchill's language, shorn of all the usual diplomatic niceties of phraseology and ambiguity, vivid and forthright, poured into millions of homes by the radio last night like an invigorating wind sweeping away the old conceptions of style associated with British Cabinet Ministers. The address is regarded as blending perfectly searing truths, liveliness, colour, vigour, and sincerity. Reference to “Iluns.” For the first time the Nazi hierarchy was referred to as “Hitler and his Huns.” Especially rousing to the British people were the studied challenges found in Mr. Churchill's denunciation of the foreign policy pursued by Herr Hitler and Herr von Ribbenlrop, who were dubbed “marvellous twin contortionists,” and “these boastful, bullying Nazi personages, who are harassed in their guilty souls by a fear of everapproaching retribution for their crimes and the orgy of destruction in which they have plunged us all.”

No trace of hate was detected in Mr. Churchill’s tones, but they echoed tlie essence of contempt. What startled listeners as pleasantly as anything in the whole speech was the vigour with which Mr. Churchill, ridiculing Hen- Hitler's bloodcurdling threats as signs of the Nazi weakness, declared, "Now we are at war and are going to make war and persevere in making war until the other side has had enough of it. We are going to persevere as far as we can, and to the best of our ability which is not small and is always growing.” Commentators see in its refreshing tone of easy confidence a similarity between this utterance and Drake’s immortal action in finishing his game of bowls as the Armada sailed up the channel to its doom.