THINKING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 July 1940, Page 9

THINKING

- URGED BY MR HAROLD NICOLSON TRUE CONCEPTION OF WAR. SMASHING THE HITLER LEGEND. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY. June 30. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Information, Mr Harold Nicolson. in a speech, urged three things as thoughts which should be uppermost in the minds of all British people: First, avoidance of defeat, secondly, the achievement of victory; thirdly, the construction of a new world bearing little resemblance to the old world and in which opportunity, equality and security should, at any sacrifice, be secured for all. Two special products of the German propaganda, he said, needed combating by all right-thinking men and women. The first was that Germany was irresistible. “This is not a little war waged in certain areas of Western Europe.” he said, “nor will it come to a conclusion within the narrow land frontiers in which alone Hitler can operate. This is a war in which the great oceans and the great air spaces of the world will play a decisive part. “Do not let us think of ourselves as a people besieged in a small island within an iron ring of enemies. Let us' think of ourselves as holding the front line of a vast defensive position, with behind us the great forces of our Empire, great resources of the Americas and the whole of the highways of the world. NAVAL SUPREMACY. Mr Nicolson said that to the German people today Hitler appeared as some Messianic and almost supernatural leader whose might could not be resisted by any force. He had till now triumphed by the perfection of his mechanism, but he was now faced with the new element which broke the power of Spain as it broke the power of Napoleon: he was faced by the unconquerable supremacy of the British Navy. “Look at large maps,” he said: “do not look at little maps. Remember that if we can resist this invasion and falsify this prophecy the Hitler legend will have received its first tremendous refutation. Hitler knows that he, and still more Italy, cannot survive a protracted war. He knows that as the months pass we, with our greater resources, shall acquire first equality and then supremacy in the air. He knows, for instance that in the British Dominions no less than 20,000 pilots are being produced every year. He knows that if he cannot succeed immediately, eventually failure is bound to come.”

The second element needing refutation was the theory spread by the Fifth Column that the ordinary man and woman in Britain would be no worse off if Hitler conquered. These people did not realise that the working classes of Britain, like the working classes of other countries Hitler, had conquered, would be deprived of those rights they had won in the great battle of the last 150 years. They did not realise that the whole of Britain’s trade would fall into German hands .and that the life of the humblest man and woman in the country would become a life of which he could not dispose freely, but which in its every day and hour would be ruled, regulated, and controlled from Berlin. Mr Nicolson said in conclusion that he was filled with anger and pride, “anger against the evil men who plotted the destruction of our gentle civilisation, and pride that the task should be given to Britain once again to save Europe from the domination of evil mastery.”