PRIVILEGE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 July 1940, Page 5

PRIVILEGE

-BniTAIN’S STAND AGAINST NAZISM DEFENCE OF WHOLE SUM OF HUMAN TREASURE. APPRECIATION OF GLORIOUS OPPORTUNITY. ; (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, June 30: British Press comment reflects the growing mood of a public which is keyed up lor a drama of great events and a great trial and which is becoming conscious, as it awaits the shock and reflects upon the issue, of that sense of privilege which has been eloquently staled in a speech by a junior Alinisfer. On Friday at Cheltenham Mr Richard Law, Financial Secretary to the War Office, said: “How fortunate we are in our clays. Never before, not even 25 years ago, have men and women been given so glorious an opportunity. Never before has the whole sum of human treasure been given into our hands to guard and fight for. We may thank God we have been privileged above all peoples of the world to testify to the truth which is in us and by which we live.” Mr J. A. Spender, writing in the “Sunday Times,” has the same thought when he pictures Britain standing between the world and the anarchy toward which Hitlerism drives it. So far as Britain looks to the rest of the world for help it is not for the defence of her own territory and possessions, but because she is defending fundamental values on which the welfare of civilisation and happiness everywhere depend, and because with her defeat the way would stand wide open for a world war stretching out interminably of which no one could foresee the outcome. “DECENT & DAUNTLESS.” It is "the world’s better destinies” which Mr J. L. Garvin also sees as the final issue at stake in the next few weeks and months. In the "Sunday Observer” he says: "We are about to be assailed. We are not beleaguered. Our sea power and air power range far and wide. At any moment now or within a couple of weeks, as soon as the total disarmament of France is accomplished, the storm of an attempted blitzkrieg by an air onslaught and other means will begin against Britain herself. For the world’s better destinies as for our own, all depends on keeping this island citadel unconquered and impregnable. More glorious still than when wc wrote last week, Britain stands out in the sight of mankind. The American-born writer, Henry James, when he threw in his lot with us in the last war, called us a ‘decent and dauntless people.’ We ask for no better word.” Such convictions—less articulate but no less firm—inspire the resolution with which the ordinary man and woman are hourly awaiting the German onslaught, knowing that it will be powerful and cruel. They realise that the testing time will be anxious because it comes before the mobilisation for war of the country's and the Empire's resources has fully established their superiority over those which the enemy has pressed into the service of aggression and exploited to the very utmost. Nevertheless, the public mind is by no means exclusively occupied with the needs and chances of an immediate battle for Britain. The commentators look farther ahead and there is a recurrent insistence on the need for unremitting work and organisation so that when Hitler’s challenge to Britain’s own life has been met and thrown back a counter-attack shall be carried into the enemy territory with the least, possible delay and with crushing effect.