NOT UNDER-RATED

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20114, 7 December 1939, Page 5

NOT UNDER-RATED

POWER OF NAZIS HALIFAX’S WARNING “NO EASY VICTORY” ATTITUDE OF ALLIES SEE STRUGGLE THROUGH (Eire. Tot. Copyright—United Press Assn.) (British Official Wireless.) Reed. Noon. RUGBY, Dec. 6. Tlie Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Viscount Halifax, in his inspiring speecli in the House of Lords yesterday, said'he fully recognised the magnitude of the task that lies before the Allies in their resolve to see the war through.

They understood well enough, said Lord Halifax, what was at stake. They did not expect an easy victory. They did not under-rate the skill and power of de term matron of

their enemies, nor did they count on an early collapse on the enemy's home front, but they also knew the quality of their own resolution and knew that recognition of the issues at stake would keep that resolution both united and intense.

Where physical force was invoked for the destruction of the values, moral and material, on which our very life depended, it was, in the last resort, only by physical force that the ravages of the evil spirit could be resisted and contained. Resistance by itself would not achieve its purpose unless when it had opened the door to the positive work of reconstruction, we were able to enlist much practical wisdom in that great task. Fully Appreciated

The Government fully (appreciated and recognised the importance of the issues to which these considerations gave rise. It might well be that from working together on the concrete problems and difficulties arising in finance and trade that closer political understanding might spring and develop. Here, again, in considering the future of economic as well <is political collaboration they must not only keep in line with the Allies and with the Dominions, but must also consider the interests of many nations themselves to-day not belligerent, and they might hope to get security and even reconstruction wisely planned. The British people sometimes, perhaps, were slow to grasp the full implication of events or to draw the deductions which forced upon them the necessity for grlave decisions, but their judgment was shrewd and astonishingly sure, and it was just because they had come to see with perfect clarity how impossible life was to-day on the conditions created by the present rulers of Germany that there was no inconsistency between their passionate desire for peace land their deep determination 'o see this struggle through until that purpose was attained.