UPHOLDER OF PEACE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 January 1939, Page 5

UPHOLDER OF PEACE

TASK OF THE BRITISH SOLDIER WELL PERFORMED IN MANY LANDS. LORD GORT’S TRIBUTE. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, January 25. Viscount Gort, Chief of the Imperial Staff, who is leaving on a visit to Egypt and Palestine, in a broadcast address today, said: “I am looking forward with great interest to my forthcoming visit because I am anxious on the one hand to study,'in consultation with those locally responsible, the various problems of Imperial defence in the Middle East, and on the other hand to renew personal contact with the British soldiers of all ranks who are doing work of which their fellow countrymen usually hear too little. “Nowadays it is only natural that problems of home defence should loom largo in our thoughts, but we should also remember as well that the British soldier stands as a sentinel, day in and day out, supporting the civil authorities in the maintenance of law and order in far-off parts of the world. "Usually, by the performance of his routine duties, he carried out two tasks simultaneously,. which at first sound almost irreconcilable —the maintenance of order and the, establishment of friendly relations in whatever part of the world he may find himself. His great secret lies in his unfailing good humour, his tact and sense of fair play, coupled with his uncanny ability to make his meaning understood in any language.”