HOPE UNDYING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 July 1941, Page 5

HOPE UNDYING

MR CHURCHILL’S MESSAGE TO FREE FRANCE ON NATIONAL ANNIVERSARY. EXPRESSION OF COMRADESHIP & GOODWILL. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.25 a.m.) RUGBY, July 14. The following message from Mr Winston Churchill to General de Gaulle for July 14 was issued from No. 10 Downing Street: “Two years ago I stood in the Champs Elysees and watched with emotion a splendid parade of the French Army and her Empire. Many catastrophes have filled these two terrible years and many States have been trampled down and cast into Nazi bondage. “Millions of Frenchmen have found themselves for the time being in positions of insuperable difficulty. Some have broken under the strain and let themselves slide into a bottomless pit of despair. But the soul of France can never be destroyed and the spirit of the French people will rise again from all the ruin and misery, purified and rejuvenated by what it has undergone To you and your gallant comrades I send this message of greeting and goodwill. I send a message to tell all true Frenchmen and French women, wherever they may be and however hard their lot, that the British nation and Empire will always be on the march along the great road which leads to victory. I feel sure that most of us will live to see another July 14 when the glories of France will be restored and. when, amid the roar of a liberated Europe, we shall celebrate a festival of peace and freedom. Hard, stern years lie before us, but the end is certain and the end will make amends for all. It is a good augury that this July 14 should witness the liberation of Syria from the control of Wiesbaden and cleanse it from the intrigues and infiltrations of the Huns. By British and French hands independence and sovereignty can be restored to the Arab peoples and the historic interest of France in Syria can be recognised and preserved. Thus encouraged and thus fortified we can turn again to our toils and our duly.”