MANY LESSONS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 September 1942, Page 3

MANY LESSONS

I.IARNED BV BRITISH PEOPLE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIAN CIVILISATION. ADDRESS BY LORD HALIFAX. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, September 20. A comparison of the Britain of today with that of two years ago when the Nazis began to bomb London was given by the British Ambassador in Washington, Lord Halifax, in a broadcast in the United States. Many new lessons had been learnt by the British people, said the ambassador, among them recognition that, while capacity to take punishment might avert defeat, only capacity to hand it out would bring victory. With eager satisfaction the British people had seen the first offensive blows delivered on Japanese aggression, and hour by hour they had watched the magnificent struggle of the armies of Russia, exacting a- fearful price for every yard they yielded. “Though we are determined to rid Europe of Hitler and all his works,” continued Lord Halifax, “we are not so foolish as to suppose that the world after the war will be the same world as before, Though we see the war as one of liberation for enslaved'peoples, we also see it as a struggle to keep open the road from the Christian past to a more Christian future. We know that stripped of the accidents, which brought this or that nation into the war, the real issue for us is whether Christianity and all it means is to survive.”

The Nazis would declare, said Lord Halifax, that Christianity offered no answer to the pressing problems of life today. “If we had been prepared to turn our backs on these things of the spirit that are our birthright,” he added, “we need never have gone to war. We might have accepted the Nazi philosophy, and filled our bellies with the crumbs that fell from the Nazi table —and the price would have been slavery. We are resolved never again to lose that new sense of values which we have won through the war.”