RESOLUTION FIRM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 May 1940, Page 6

RESOLUTION FIRM

CONFIDENCE IN ALLIED TRIUMPH BRITISH AND FRENCH FORCES NOT DEFEATED. DIFFICULTIES WILL BE OVERCOME. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day. 11.50 a.m.) RUGBY, May 28. Mr. Duff Cooper, broadcasting as Minister of Information recalled how a week ago he had spoken of the danger in which tho British Expeditionary Force stood and how he had contended that even if the Allies lost this battle, they would not have lost the war. He recalled those words tonight, when the danger of the British Expeditionary Force was great indeed and he would recall also, other dark days, after the weary British forces had staggered down the roads of France with the German army pressing on their heels. They could all remember in the following year how the Germans first used poison gas and the Allied soldiers had no defence against it and it seemed that the enemy would carry all before him. They could remember the submarine campaign of 1917 when the enemy were sinking one out of evciy four ships that sailed from or to Britain, They could remember, too, the last’great offensive in March, 1918, which for many days drove all before it. “On each of those occasions, he said “it seemed to many of the fainthearted that the war was lost but it never was—and all these events, which were disastrous at the time proved but a prelude to victory.' . After warning the public againsi Nazi propaganda, which still sought to divide the British and French, Mr Dull Cooper turned to the military position. “The enemy have succeeded in forcing their way through the lines of the Allies and have reached the sea, ’ ho said, “but the armies of the Allies have not been defeated and whenever we have met the enemy, whether on land, sea or in the air we have proved our superiority, "it will be necessary to do our utmost to withdraw our army from the positions they how occupy but it will not be a defeated army we shall withdraw. It will be an army whose courage is still high and whose confidence ’is still unshaken and in which every officer and man is still burning with a desire to meet the enemy in combat. The army knows how we have driven German ships from the sea and how the German air force repeatedly, although in superior numbers, turned tail before us in the air and the army is hungry for the opportunity of meeting German soldiers on the field. That opportunity will come in due course.” The Minister concluded: “The standard of liberty is still flying high and under it are massed the armies of the British Commonwealth and the French Republic. Towards the same standard are flocking the remnants of the fighting forces of those unhappy countries upon whom has descended the horror of German tyranny. Czechs and Poles. Norwegians and Dutch —yes, and Belgians too—arc still desperately desirous of fighting for the freedom that their countries lost. And on that flag of liberty are fixed the anxious eyes of all free men all over the world. They know it is their emblem as much as it is ours and they tremble to think it could ever be pulled down. They need not tremble. Their cause is safe. We are not vainglorious and will not boast but our hearts are calm and our resolution firm.”