OCR FUTURE AT STAKE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 February 1942, Page 2

OCR FUTURE AT STAKE

PREMIER ON THE FALL OF SINGAPORE DANGER BROUGHT NEARER TO NEW ZEALAND. CHALLENGE TO ADDITIONAL EFFORT. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. _ “The fall of Singapore is a severe blow to the Allied cause,” said the Prime Alinister, Air Fraser, in Wellington yesterday. It would be idle and wrong, he added, to pretend that the loss of Singapore had not brought danger nearer to our shores. At the same time there was no room for foolish or frantic panic. “To the democratic nations of the Pacific,” said Mr Fraser, “the fall of Singapore is at once an increased menace and a further call to additional effort and even more unremitting work to stem, the advance of the enemy; to prepare with all possible speed and efficiency to meet any further attacks that may be made on Allied territory; and to lay surely and truly the foundations of ultimate victory—a task in which all the Pacific Allies are very closely and effectively co-operating. “In my opinion Mr Churchill’s speech this morning struck a true, realistic, unflinching note. He admitted the seriousness of the loss; he faced the adverse consequences of the fall of the city and naval base; anaylsed its effect upon the whole world war situation generally, and examined very frankly the position in all the fields of war activity. Mr Churchill’s speech was again a clarion call to all of us neither to falter nor fail. New Zealand responded instantly. “In every New Zealand heart today there is increased determination to strive more strenuously than ever for victory. Our future as a nation, our future as part of the British Commonwealth of Nations, the safety of our own shores, the fate of all our people, of our children, of future generations in our fair land, depend upon the sincerity, the energy, and the efficiency we put into our national war task and the discharge of our respective responsibilities.

“It would be idle and wrong to pretend that the fall of Singapore has not brought danger nearer to our shores. It has done so. But while there is ample cause for well-grounded concern, there is no room for foolish or frantic panic. “We will neither wince nor tremble. We will not fall into undignified complaining or weeping, or grizzling, or growling, or indulge in stupid, unininformed, unhelpful, carping criticism about those who have had the higher direction of our joint war effort, and who with the forces and means at their disposal could not possibly overcome the huge handicaps of time and material which confronted them. New Zealand will face courageously whatever situation will develop. It will do so with calm assurance and dignity as well as with courage. “Our danger, which I do not minimise, will decrease in ratio to the effort we all make to build up resistance to any possible attack and to contribute to the programme for victory now being planned in the Pacific and progressively and increasingly operated by our Mother Country, Great Britain, by our sister Dominion, Australia, by our great ally, the United States, and by our other brave partners, the Netherlands East Indies and China, as well as India and Burma. “At the nerve centre of the struggle, the courageous example set by the United Kingdom, Holland, Belgium, Norway, and the other European allies, particularly the tenacious and indomitable fight put up by Russia, is a stimulus to all of us.”