“DIVIDE AND CONQUER”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 July 1941, Page 7

“DIVIDE AND CONQUER”

POLICY OF TOTALITARIAN POWERS. “With Machiavellian cunning, totalitarian tyranny has sought to divide and conquer’ peoples and nations that should stand together,” said the American Ambassador to Britain, Mr Winant, in a recent address. “By 'blackmail and terror, by intrigue and deceit, they have sought to weaken and undermine national unity in those countries whose freedom they would destroy. They have sought to revive and inflame old and discredited class and racial hatreds. They have missed no chance to make bad blood between friendly nations in order to delay and frustrate common action against international banditry and aggression which threaten the freedom of all nations. But make no mistake. So far the totalitarians have been appallingly successful. Experience has proved that they have a way of keeping their threats and breaking their promises. They have destroyed, one by one, one free nation after another. While a few short years ago these lawless .men could have been put down by a few simple police measures, had the then free nations of the world had the will and wisdom to act together, now the forces and resources of all the remaining free nations of the world must be employed' if we are to look forward to a world 'freed from the domination of fear and force. For men and women of good will there is only one choice. When dictators conspire together, men and women of good will everywhere must act together. This is no time for vain regrets or futile recriminations. We have all slept while wicked and evil men plotted destruction. We have all thought that we might save ourselves from the holocaust and that what happened to far distant countries could never happen to us, We have all tried to make ourselves believe that we were not our brother’s keeper. But we now are beginning to realise that we need our brothers as much as our brothers need us. The freedom-living peace-loving peoples of this earth are coming to realise that this is not Britain's fight alone.”