WORLDWIDE DANGER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 September 1941, Page 6

WORLDWIDE DANGER

ISSUE FACING ALL FREE COUNTRIES CANADIAN PREMIER’S WARNING. ADDRESS AT MANSION HOUSE. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 11.50 a.m.) RUGBY, September 4. Speaking at the Lord Mayor of London’s luncheon at the Mansion House, Mr Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada, said the Canadian Navy had increased tenfold since the war began while the results of the Empire air training plan, which was Canada’s greatest contribution to . the common cause, had already far exceeded the original plans. In addition to the two operational divisions, there were many thousands of Canadian troops in Britain, including a tank brigade and an infantry division which had recently arrived. Before the year was out they would send over still another division —an armoured division. Mr King said he was more than ever convinced that the dangers we faced together were worldwide dangers. The very existence of the British Isles was threatened while the most vital sources of British supplies and routes of communication and transportation everywhere were in danger. No greater mistake could be made than to' think that British interests were alone menaced. No country still possessing its freedom and independence was secure. We faced the battles not of nations but of continents. If tomorrow the world would not have to face a battle between hemispheres, -it was going to take all the strength of all the free peoples to keep the conflict in this hemisphere and finally to extinguish it before the whole world was in flames.

“The war will be far longer and harder and more desperate if all free men do not rally on your side while you at the fullness of your strength for the task facing Britain and those fighting with her, in nothing less than the task of saving humanity,” he said. The most vital strategic area in the world today, he said, was the great “northern bridge,” stretching between Newfoundland, Greenland, Iceland and Scotland. Across it came vast supplies of materials and men and back across it, if “this island bridgehead” should ever be lost, would move the enslaving hordes of new barbarians. That was why Canadian fighting men were in Britain. Unless the whole resources and/total energy of the free world were thrown into the struggle, the war might drag on for years, carrying in its train famine, pestilence and horrors still undreamed of. As long as the forces of destruction continue to rage there could be no security, progress or peace in any corner of the world.