Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1942. A LIGHT THAT STILL SHINES.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 October 1942, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1942. A LIGHT THAT STILL SHINES.

TN virtue of both character and ability, in the right blend 01. idealism and realism anil in commanding powers 01. insight, calm reflect ion and sure judgment, General Smuts, as he chooses still to be called though he has been elevated to the rank o. field-marshal. takes a foremost place among the statesmen ol the British Commonwealth ol: Nations and of the world. It was therefore expected that his address to a meeting of members of both Houses of the Mother of Parliaments would be memorable of its kind and the expectation has not been disappointed. Acclaimed by those to whom it was immediately addressed, General Smuts’s speech has been hailed in many lands as one of the great utterances of the war.

Giving proof in every passage of his ability to concentrate on essentials and to reduce to their true proportions all secondary details, General Smuts declared his firm confidence in the ability of the United Nations to win the war—-a world conflict which he regards as a continuation of that which broke out in J9l4 — an( t to w in Ihe peace. The faith of the great South African will the more readily be accepted anti shared by the people of the British Commonwealth and those of all. nations that are or aspire again Io be free since he set .lull emphasis on the extreme narrowness of the margin by which.! he nations standing opposed to totalitarian barbarism escaped final disaster at some vital stages in three years ol defensive war. In cited, indeed, he claimed fairly that the fate of the war had been' influenced greatly, if not determined, not only by the heroic defence of Britain against the German air blitz, but by blunders, fatal from their standpoint, committed by our enemies—particularly the German attack on Russia, and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, which instantly brought a solidly united American nation into the war.

It is characteristic of General Smuts that while he declared that for the United Nations the phase of defensive war had ended and that of the offensive had opened, he declined to enter into competition with “amateur strategists,” as he called them, in mapping out an Allied offensive programme. He made it clear, however, that he looks to early and vigorous action by the Allies —there were dangers of. over-preparation to be avoided, he observed in passing—not in an easy sweep to victory, but in traversing the rough and terrible path that lay ahead. It would call, he said,

for all the combined resources, the mightiest efforts and the highest leadership of the United Nations to bring them to their goal. There was no place for wishful or complacent thinking. A mortal struggle was on and it would become more desperate as the end drew near.

Nothing General Smuts had to say was more inspiring, or rested on a firmer foundation, than his affirmation that the spirit ol: man was neither dead nor decadent, that, it would never bend the knee before the new slavery of the debased ideology of the Nazis and their accomplices, and that the light of freedom still, shines. Of the truth of that affirmation we have proof, not only in the rising power of the free nations, but in the unquenched spirit of the betrayed French and other peoples now the victims of murderous oppression.