WILL TO WIN

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 156, 1 June 1940, Page 7

WILL TO WIN

THE BRITISH SPIRIT. WORE IN' INDUSTRY. PEOPLE’S SACRIFICE. (United,Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. ) , (British Official Wireless.) Received June 1, 9.54 a.m. RUGBY, May 31. There has been a splendid response to the appeal which Mr Churchill’s Administration has made for harder and longer work in the munitions industries. Already the rate of output of essential supplies shows the effect of the manner in which the managements and workpeople have braced themselves in response to the call of critical times. TJie increase ip the rate of output of munitions is very marked. Assurance to the above effect was given in a public statement to-day by the new Minister of Supply (Mr Herbert Morrison). The Minister also promised that, in applying the powers conferred upon lnm by the new emergency defence regulations, he would avoid interference for its own sake, but lie would act in the spirit in which Parliament had delegated so important a part of its authority—“the spirit of absolute determination that no personal or material vested interests, and no past liabit6 of thought, shall be allowed to stand in the way for one moment of our drive for victory.” Mr Morrison disclosed that Countess Roberts, daughter of the late Field-Marshal Earl Roberts, had made an offer which he had accepted of many magnificent trophies of war which came to her father in the course of his brilliant career. There are field guns and cannon of every line of the Field-Marshal’s own campaigns, and priceless historic trophies of Avar, many of them dating back for centuries, which Avere given to him in gratitude by the Government of India and others Avliom he served. Mr Morrison added. “It needs little imagination to understand the spirit of high resolve and sacrifice which must have animated her action, and the Avorld Avill record it as Avh.at it isa symbol of the intense will to victory that inspires Britain. Everything that past achiei'ement has brought to this country will be cast into the scale.”

Earl Roberts, the famous British soldier, was horn in 1832 and was awarded die Victoria Cross for his gallantry in the Indian Mutiny. In 1830 he led the great inarch from ’Kabul to Kandahar, ' and in 1885 was made Commander-in-Chicf in India. He went to South Africa in 1899 and was responsible for the victories over the Boers in 1900. In 1901, Roberts, then an earl and field-marshal, become Commander-in-Chief of 'the British Army. He subsequently ■ became president of the National Service League, and advocated the raising of a citizen army. During a tour of the front in the Great War in 1914 he caught a chill which proved fatal. He was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral.