CLOSE UNITY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 June 1940, Page 5

CLOSE UNITY

MEETING OF ALLIED SUPREME COUNCIL SOLIDARITY REINFORCED. RESOLUTE COMBINED EFFORT. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, June 2. Friday’s declaration of the Supreme War Council that the Allied Governments and peoples are more than ever implacably resolved to pursue in the closest possible concord their present struggle till complete victory was achieved was a timely expression of the spirit alike of the determination and co-operation of which there are numerous manifestations in Britain.

The meeting of the Council, which happens to be the first at which Britain was represented by its new all-party war Government, was the culmination of a series of consultations between the British and French Premiers during the anxious days which followed the German breakthrough. In the early days of the war Mr Chamberlain, returning from a meeting of the Supreme War Council, remarked how the behaviour of the representatives of the Allied Governments would have suggested that they were meeting as members of a single Government. The character of the consultations in recent days between Mr Churchill and M. Reynaud, whether in France or in England, has similarly reflected the sense of close union which animates the two peoples, and in political circles the comment was heard that the two statesmen met and discussed rather as two leading members of one Cabinet faced with a sudden crisis than as the Premiers of two different countries. There is irony in the fact that at the very moment when Nazi propaganda is making a new and rather obvious “drive” with a view to separating France and Britain German actions in the field are serving strongly to reinforce the original solidarity of the two countries. SEAL OF COMRADESHIP. The adversities which British and French troops have shared in common in the memorable withdrawal from Belgium, and the visible closeness of the co-operation which the naval and air forces of the two countries have given to each other and to the ground forces in the relief which they have brought to these sorely pressed troops have set a seal of comradeship upon the future of their joint enterprise in arms more binding than that of the distant memories of the last war.

French troops arriving in England in the past 48 hours from the Dunkirk beaches have had a welcome as warm as, and perhaps more demonstrative than that accorded the men of the B.E.F. themselves.

In France the part played by the R.A.F. in helping to break the force of the onslaught of German divd bombers and armoured forces and in spreading confusion far behind the lines is generously recognised, while in Britain there is growing admiration for the indomitable spirit in which the French have braced themselves, first to stem disaster, and then to prepare to retrieve it. and all the time calmly to prepare to face the converging dangers which, though never unforeseen. now offer their challenge more nearly. The declaration of the Supreme War Council underlines a fact which may have been insufl'icently pondered in Berlin and, perhaps, elsewhere —that that challenge will be met by unstinted united effort of two determined peoples indissolubly united in a resolve to rid the world of the nightmare of terrorism and oppression.