IN ITS STRIDE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 January 1940, Page 6

IN ITS STRIDE

GREAT BRITAIN MOBILISES RESOURCES

THREE MONTHS RESPITE A GODSEND. HITLER LOSES HIS BEST CHANCE. (British Official Wireless.) . RUGBY. January 27. Tn eloquent passages on the subject of democracy and totalitarianism in war. the First. Lord of the Admiralty. Mr Churchill described the function of criticism and freedom of opinion in the healthy body politic.

He began by admitting, as did the Foreign Secretary. Lord Halifax, last week, the initial advantage which dictatorship obtained in a deliberatelyplanned aggression, but contended that such an advantage did not last long once democracy was aroused. ■This great country has now got into its stride and has mobilised a large part of its immense resources and is mobilising the rest,” he said. "It will be said that the .other side are doing this. too. They, too, are expanding their armies and increasing and improving their air force. But Germany has been going for more than three years at full wartime pace, and it may well be that they have no large untapped reserve of manpower or material or life energy to draw upon so as to make an additional spurt. We, on the other hand, are expanding every day, and the pace is growing quicker. "Therefore, I cannot doubt that these additional months of preparation have been a Godsend to us. and whatever may happen in the future, provided we do not relax our viligance, Hitler has already lost his best chance. “We cannot place in the field immediately the groat armies which we need —which we are determined to form, and for which millions of eager men stand ready. We have to increase very largely our manufacture of munitions and equipment of all kinds. Immense plant and factories are needed and these can only gradually come fully into production. But we are much further ahead than we were at this time in the last war.’’

The Government, Mr Churchill said, was backed by the stern, resolute British Parliament, which in the last 250 years had fought several great and long European wars with unwearied zeal and tenacity and had carried them all to a successful conclusion. MODERN GERMANY WEAKER? One of the things this war was going to prove was whether in modern times the full strength of nations could be realised under the totalitarian systems working through the Ogpu or the Gestapo. It was in their fear of criticism that the Nazi and Bolshevik dictatorships ran their greatest risk. They silenced all criticism by the concentration camp, the rubber truncheon or the firing party. Thus the men at'the top were fed only with facts that were palatable to ’ them. Scandal, corruption and shortcomings were not exposed because there were not independent voices. Instead of being exposed, they continued to fester behind the pompous frontage of the State. Certainly, what they had seen of the Russian war efforts when opposed by the heroic Finns should give the British and French democracies and parliaments additional confidence in their own struggle witli Nazi despotism. "1 always hesitate to say anything which seems to underrate the formidable character of the foe whom we have to fight," Mr Churchill continued. "Yet I cannot rid my mind of a feeling that the Imperial Germany of 1914 was a stronger community than the Nazi Germany which now confronts us.

“The haggard, hard-driven party regime which the Nazis have raised and reared from defeat and hatred may function for a while with terrible precision. but whether it has the same solidity or power to endure reverses which was shown by the Kaiser’s Germany is yet to be proved. We mean to put it to the proof."’