NOTE OF CONFIDENCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 October 1941, Page 5

NOTE OF CONFIDENCE

STRUCK BY MR ATTLEE ADDRESS IN LONDON FIGHT AGAINST NAZI BRUTALITY. ANXIETY TO GIVE FULL AID TO RUSSIA. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, October 15. The Parliamentary Labour leader and Lord Privy Seal, Mr Attlee, in a speech at a luncheon of the National Defence, and Public Interest Committee, said that everyone was full of admiration for the magnificent fight which was being put up by Russia, and everyone was anxious that the Russians should have the utmost possible aid. He gave the assurance that every member of the Government shared that anxiety to the full, not only from the material point of view in helping a great people, but also for the obvious reason that Russia’s resistance was of the utmost importance to everyone fighting Hitler.

OVERTAKING HITLER’S START. When it came to the consideration of what could be done and what was the most effective thing to do, only those who had access to the facts could really decide, he said. Those who did know could not speak; there was no intention of giving the Nazis our plans. The Nazis knew that the potential resources of the British Empire, the United States, and the Soviet Union were immense. There was a gap between the potential and the actual. Time was needed for development, and Hitler’se advantage in this war was that he had a flying start. He had willed the war and he had prepared for it. Hitler lived on blitz tactics, but the longer the war went on the greater would be the closing of the gap between the potential and the actual strength. Probably the knowledge of that explained the brutal ferocity of Hitler’s methods.

Mr Attlee expressed the opinion that the British people are insufficiently aware of what the Nazis have done and are doing. “We find it difficult to credit that men after the years of civilisation should become so utterly bruralised,” he said. “In spite of our knowledge of what the Nazis did to the German people, we have not appreciated what they have done to others.”

In Poland, Russia, Yugoslavia and other countries there had been great massacres—a most abominable slaughter of men, women and children. “We should be foolish to imagine that what the Nazis have done to the Poles or Greeks will not be done should they gain a foothold here,” he remarked.

“When the war is over those responsible for these atrocities must not escape punishment. But besides punishment there is reform, and one of the hardest tasks to be undertaken after the war is the reform of the survivors of the generation of German people who have been deliberately trained in barbarism, deliberately debauched and deceived by the Nazi regime. It is no good imagining that we can get peace in the world unless we see to it that till there is absolute proof of a change of heart there the people are kept in a position in which they cannot again do harm.” Mr Attlee closed his speech on a note of confidence. “The fight is not yet won, and there is much yet to be endured, but this is certain: the people iOf this country, when . faced with the greatest ordeal in their history. have arisen to a height of constancy, courage and determination that has made them the admiration of the whole world. It is this which, gives us confidence of the eventual result of the struggle.”