DUNKERQUE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24405, 17 September 1940, Page 6

DUNKERQUE

"IT IS VICTORY” So long as the English tongue survives, the word Dunkerque will (the New York Times said in a recent article) be spoken with reverence. For in that harbour, in such a hell as never blazed on earth before, at the end of a lost battle, the rags and blemishes that have hidden the soul of democracy fell away. There, beaten, but unconquered, in shining splendour, she faced the enemy. They sent away the wounded first. Men died so that others could escape. It was not so simple a thing as courage, which the Nazis had in plenty. It was not so simple a thing as discipline, which can be hammered into men by a drill sergeant. It was not the result of careful planning, for there could have been little. It was the common man of the free countries, rising in all his glory cut of mjll, office, factory, mine, farm, and ship, applying to war the lessons learned when he went cunvn the shaft;to bring out trapped comrades, when he hurled the lifeboat through the surf, when he endured poverty and hard work for his children’s sake.

This shining thing in the souls of free men Hitler cannot command, or attain or conquer. He has crushed it, where he could, from German hearts. It is the great tradition of democracy. It is the future. It is victory.