VIOLATION OF FRONTIERS
FOLLOWS LAVISH ASSURANCES OF FRIENDSHIP Nazi Bombs Ram Down Without Warning SYMPATHY WITH RUSSIAN PEOPLE THREAT TO THOUSAND MILLION HUMAN BEINGS (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 11.35 a.in.) RUGBY, .lime 22. In his broadcast tonight the Prime Minister, Mr Winston Churchill, said: “I have occasion to speak to you tonight be-, cause we have reached one of the turning points of the war. In the first of these intense turning points, a year ago, France fell prostrate under the German hammer and we had to face the storm alone. The second was when the It.A.F. beat the Hun raiders out of the daylight air, and thus warded off a Nazi invasion of our island while w r e were still ill-armed and illprepared. The third turning point was when the President and Congress of the United States passed the Lease and Lend enactment, devoting nearly two thousand millions sterling of the wealth of the New World to help us defend our liberties and their own. “Those,” Mr Churchill continued, “were the three climaterica. The fourth is now upon us. At 4 o’clock this morning, Hitler attacked and invaded Russia. AH his usual formalities of perfidy were observed with scrupulous technique. A nonaggression treaty had been solemnly signed and was in force between the two countries. No complaint had been made by Germany of its non-fulfilment. Under its cloak of false confidence, German armies grew up in immense strength along the line which stretches from the White Sea to the Black Sea and their fleets and armoured divisions slowly and methodically took up their stations. Then, suddenly, without a declaration of war, without even an ultimatum, German bombs rained down from the sky upon Russian cities, German troops violated the Russian frontiers, and an hour later the German Minister who, until the night before, was lavishing assurances of friendship and almost of alliance with Russia, called upon the Russian Ambassador to tell him that a state of war existed between Germany and Russia. Thus was repeated, on a far larger scale, the same kind of outrage against every form of signed pact and international faith which we witnessed in Norway, Denmark, Holland and Belgium and which Hitler’s accomplice and jackal Mussolini so faithfully imitated in the case of Greece.
WARNINGS RECALLED “All this,” said Mr Churchil, “was no surprise to me. In fact, I gave clear and precise warnings to Stalin as to what was coming. I gave him warnings as I have given warnings to others before. I can only hope those warnings did not fall unheeded. All we know at present is this —that the Russian people are defending their native soil and that their leaders have called upon them to resist to the utmost. Hitler is a monster of wickedness. Insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder, not content with having all Europe under his heel, or having terrorised it into various forms of abject submission, he must now carry on his work of butchery and desolation among the vast multitudes of Russia and Asia. The terrible military machine which we and the rest of the civilised world so foolishly, so supinely and so insensately allowed the Nazi gangsters to build up. year by year, from almost nothing—this machine cannot rest idle lest it fall to pieces. It must be in continual motion, trampling down the homes and rights of hundreds of millions of men, and moreover it must be fed continually with flesh and with oil.
“So now this bloodthirsty guttersnips must launch his mechanised armies at new fields of slaughter, pillage and devastation. Poor as are the Russian peasants, workmen and soldiers, he must steal from them their daily bread. He must devour their harvests and rob them of the oil which drives their ploughs, and thus produce a famine without example in human history. “And even the carnage and ruin which his; victory, should he gain it—lie has not gained it yet—will bring upon the Russian people, will itself only be a stepping-stone to an attempt to plunge the four or five hundred millions who live in India into that bottomless pit of human degradation over which the diabolic emblem of the swastika flaunts itself.
THREAT THAT LIES BEHIND
“It is not too much to say here, on this summer evening.” added Mr Churchill, “that the lives and happiness of a thousand million additional human beings are now menaced with brutal Nazi violence. It is enough to make us hold our breath. But presently I shall show you something else that lies behind, and something that touches very nearly the life of Britain and the United States. The Nazi re-, gime is indistinguishable from the worst features of Communism. It is devoid of principle, except appetite and racial domination. It excels all forms of human wickedness in the of-1 ficiency of its cruelty and ferocious aggression. No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communisna than I have been for the last 25 years' I will unsay no word I have spoken about it. but all this fades away before the spec-' taele which is now unfolded. I seej Russian soldiers standing on the Hires-1 hold of their native land guarding the I fields which their fathers have tilled I from time immemorial. I see them ' guarding their homes, whore mothers! and wives pray—all yes. for there are! times when all pray—for the safety of I their loved ones, for the return of the I breadwinner, for their protector. 11 see the ten thousand villages of Russia where the means of existence is wrung i
so hardly from the soil, but where there are still primeval human joys, where maidens laugh and children plan. I see advancing upon this land, in hideous onslaught, the Nazi war machine, with its clanking heel-click-ing, dandified Prussian officers, its crafty experts, and I see also the dull, drilled, docile, brutish masses of the Hun soldiery, plodding on like a swarm of crawling locusts. I see German bombers in the sky. still smarting from the whipping they have had over England. looking for easier and safer prey.
AN UNDEVIATING AIM “It is not for me to speak of the action of the United States." said Mr Churchill in. conclusion, “but this I will say—that if Hitler imagines his attack on Russia will cause Ihe slightest deviation of aim or slackening in spirit of the great democracies who are resolved upon his doom, he is woefully mistaken. On the contrary, we shall bo fortified and encouraged in our efforts to rescue mankind from this tyranny by which nations have allowed themselves to be cut down, one by one. when by united action they could so easily have saved themselves and saved the world from this catastrophe. But when I spoke a few minutes ago of Hitler’s blood lust and the hateful appetites which have impelled or lured him to his Russian adventure I said there was one deeper move behind his outrage. He wishes to destroy the Russian power because he hopes, if he succeeds in this, that he will be able to bring the main strength' of his Army and Air Force from, the east and hurl it upon this island. His invasion of Russia is no more than a prelude to an attempted, invasion of the British Isles. He hopes, no doubt, that this may be accomplished before winter comes, and that lie can overwhelm Britain before the sea and air power of the United States can make itself felt. The Russian danger is, therefore, our danger and the danger of the United States, because the cause of any Russian fighting for his hearth and homo is the cause of every free man and free people in every quarter of the globe. Let us learn the- lesson let us redouble our exertions and strike with united strength while life and power remain."
“CATARACT OF HORRORS” “And clear behind -ill this storm." said Mr Churchill. “I see that small group of villainous mon who have planned, organised and launched this cataract of horrors on mrJikind. And then my mind goes back across the years to (he days when the Russian 'armies wore our Allies against the same devilish foe, and fought with so much valour and constancy and helped to gain the victory, though in sharing of that, alas, through no fault of ours, they were utterly kept out. I Now I have to declare the decision of | the British Government, and I feel sure it is a decision in which the great Dominions will in due course concur, but wo must speak it now without delay. I have to make no declaration, but can you doubt what our policy will be? Wo have but one aim, and one single, irrevocable purpose. Wo arc resolved to destroy Hitler and eyery vestige of the Nazi regime. From this nothing will turn us—nothing. Wo. will never parley, never negotiate
with Hitler or any of his gang. We shall fight him on land, we shall fight him on the sea and shall fight him in the air, until, with God’s help, we have rid the earth of his shadow and rid the peoples of his yoke. Any man or State who fights against Nazism will have our aid. Any man or State who marches with Hitler is our foe. This applies not only to organised States, but to all representatives of that vile race of Quislings who make themselves agents and tools of • the Nazi regime against their fellow-coun-trymen and the lands of their birth.
JUSTICE FOR QUISLINGS’ • “These Quislings," said Mr Churchill, "like the Nazis themselves, will, be delivered by us on the morrow of victory to the justice of Allied tribunals. This is our policy and that is our declaration. It follows, therefore, that we shall give whatever help we can to Russia and to the Russian people. We shall appeal to all our friends and allies in every part of the world to follow that course and pursue it. as we shall, faithfully and steadfastly to the end. We have offered to the Government of Soviet • Russia any technical or other assistance in cur power likely to be of service to them. “We shall bomb Germany, by day as well as by night, in ever-increas-ing measure, casting upon them month by month a heavier discharge of bombs and making the German people taste and gulp each month a sharper close of the miseries they have showered upon mankind. It is noteworthy that only yesterday the R.A.F., fighting not over England but over France, cut clown with very small loss to themselves 28 of the Hun fighting machines in the air above the French soil they had invaded, defiled and profess to hold. But this is only a beginning. Our Air Force proceeds, with gathering speed. In another six months the weight of the help we are receiving from the United States, and especially in heavy bombers, will begin to tell. "This is no class war. This is a war in which the whole British Empire and the whole Commonwealth of Nations is engaged without distinction of race, creed or parly."
STORE LOOTED BURGLARY ON WEST COAST. SIGNS OF LORRY BEING USED. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) GREYMOUTH, This Day. Miller's drapery store on Mawhera Quay was burgled on Saturday night, about .E 309 worth of goods being rtolen, together with ,Cl 5 in cash. An entry was gained by smashing the panel of a door. There are indications j that a lorry was used to carry away * the loot.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WAITA19410623.2.28.1
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 June 1941, Page 6
Word count
Tapeke kupu
1,933VIOLATION OF FRONTIERS Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 June 1941, Page 6
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Wairarapa Times-Age. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.