ALLIED AIMS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 January 1940, Page 7

ALLIED AIMS

EXPOUNDED BY BRITISH AMBASSADOR ADDRESS TO AMERICANS IN PARIS. PROBLEMS OF AFTER-WAR RECONSTRUCTION. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, January 18. Addressing an American Club luncheon in Paris today, the new British Ambassador. Sir Ronald Campbell, in his first public speech in France, paid a tribute to the swiftness with which the Dominions had confounded the sceptics and rallied to Britain to fight against the Nazi doctrine. “It was one of the happiest days in our history when, within a few hours of the declaration of war, the Dominions unreservedly threw in their lot with us,” he said.

He added that the Allies’ primary aim was to win the war by destroying the enemy’s military power and to prevent him suing for peace while retaining his plunder or claiming that he had never been really defeated. Sir Ronald Campbell recalled the issues of the American War of Independence and argued that the issues for which the Allies are at war with the Nazis today were concerned essentially with the same principles as in the American Revolution. Britain and France, he said, were fighting to ensure that every freelyassociated coherent group be it organised as large State or small, be in a minority in race or religion—should inherit security to enjoy “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.” In that the whole progress of civilisation was involved.

Toward that goal Europe had been striving through history, and now, declared Sir Ronald Campbell, “at the very moment when it seemed we were nearer than ever before to our goal, suddenly that very principle is blatantly challenged in favour, I say, of a doctrine the acceptance of which would reverse the whole current of history and would, indeed, destroy the very basis of international and private life—the doctrine that might shall be right.”

Dealing with reconstruction after the war, the Ambassador said that a new order must be raised on the foundations of co-operation and mutual help. In the benefits accruing from it all the nations which were ready to play their part in good faith might expect to share. It might be that agreements would be concluded between the British and French Governments by which they would go a long way to pooling their resources. This might prove to be the first step on the road of a more generalised system of mutual help.