DECISIVE MONTHS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 October 1941, Page 5

DECISIVE MONTHS

NEED OF SUPREME EFFORT DECLARED BY BRITISH MINISTER. RUSSIA’S NOBLE EXAMPLE. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, October 5. The perils of complacency were stressed by Mr George Hicks, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Works, in a speech at Woolwich today under the auspices of the National Council of Labour. “We are now in the decisive months of the most monstrous episode in the world’s history, and the crisis demands every effort and every sacrifice,” he said. “Let us give ourselves body and soul to the struggle.” Mr Hicks drew attention .to the prime consciousness of the issues of the titanic struggle shown by the Russian people. “The people of Leningrad are working day and night,” he said. “All who are capable of bearing arms have been trained or are being trained to bear arms. Leningrad has become a citadel of popular strength, flaming with hatred and with the spirit to conquer or die. “I put it to you—have you the feeling, the temper and spirit of our Russian comrades in arms? Would you practise the scorched earth policy here if the Nazis came? Would you set your homes on fire?”

DR DALTON’S WARNING. The Minister of Economic Warfare, Dr Dalton, at a meeting in Newcastle of the National Council of Labour, said: “We on this island are experiencing a short respite from serious air attack,” but he gave a warning that there must be no relaxation of effort during the interval or any abatement of the will to victory. “The war,” he said, “is one and indivisible, whether on the Russian plains or in the Middle East, or in the skies over this country or in the Battle of the Atlantic. The success of the Moscow conference, togethei’ with Russia’s favourable declaration regarding the Atlantic charter, shows the unity of purpose of the three greatest Powers on earth—the British Commonwealth ,the United States, and the Soviet Union.

“We must fight' the common enemy by military warfare, economic warfare and political warfare. We must hold up before the eyes of the enslaved populations not only the assurance of deliverance from their bestial German oppressors, but also of a new order in which there shall be peace, plenty, freedom and security for all.”

’ UNION OF EFFORT.

Mr J. L. Garvin, writing in “The Observer,” says: “Russia possesses inexhaustible resources of fighting manpower by comparison with Hitlerism. If that manpower can be sustained more and more by British and American weapons, munitions and material, then let the conflict be as long and grim as it may, but the final triumph will be assured.”

He adds: “Russia must be . supplied at all costs. The British people have to get on top of the crisis of supply by the greatest industrial effort they have ever made. The American people have to face a changeover from ordinary business to the tremendous war output that will save their own future and mankind.

“One passage of Hitler’s latest menaces is no empty vaunt but a formidable warning. ..His accumulation of equipment and power of further production are still colossal. The industrial democracies of the west have yet to out-produce him. They must triumph on the factory front before they can conquer on the fighting front.”

As regards air production, the position was summarised aptly by the British Ambassador to the United States, Lord Halifax, when speaking in Washington yesterday. He said: “Only by an overwhelming attack from the air could conditions be created in Germany which would enable the war to be brought to a speedy conclusion.”