BRITAIN AT WAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 November 1939, Page 2

BRITAIN AT WAR

AN INVINCIBLE NATION CALL ON THE DOMINIONS. SIR JAMES ELLIOTT'S SURVEY. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. “The English are invincible,” said Sir James Elliott, speaking at a Wellington Travel Club reception yesterday. There was no “comic opera" business attached to this war, he added. They had set out to finish what was begun in 1914. Sir James, who recently returned from a trip abroad, said that England had completely prepared for war in a quiet way. There was no fuss whatever about it, and the Army, Navy, and Air Force were “on their toes" to the last man. The British Army was something to admire and was as different from the army he knew in the South African War as the present ironclad Navy was from that of older days. England’s conscription measures gave her the best men for the Army, and it was a noticeable fact, he said, that the percentage of rejections was about 10 per cent compared with 44 per cent in the Dominion.

England did not need soldiers, for perfectly trained men were turned out there in six months, but she did need from abroad food supplies, machines, and air pilots, which the Dominions could give. For instance, Canada was a great producer of machines and mechanical parts, and South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand had much to give in other ways. Herr Hitler was undoubtedly insane, Sir James said, and Herr von Ribbentrop had used his influence over the Fuehrer to bring war to a reality. German was spoken in the West End of London almost as much now as English. There was an enormous number of aliens living in England and entering business life there, and among them there was no lack of money.

To one coming back from abroad, New Zealand seemed an empty, undeveloped country, because of lack of population, which kept the country from prospering. This was due, he said, to the adoption of birth-control and the selfishness of women who would not have families.