QUEEN’S TRIBUTE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 April 1943, Page 3

QUEEN’S TRIBUTE

TO WOMEN OF EMPIRE GALLANT PART IN WAR EFFORT. QUIET HEROISM & HUMOUR. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, April 11. In the course of the broadcast (reported briefly yesterday), in which Queen Elizabeth paid tribute to the women of the Empire for the work they are doing in helping to win the war, her Majesty said: — “I want first to try to tell you just why I am speaking to you, my fellowcountrywomen all over the world. It is not because any special occasion calls for it, and not because I have any special message to give you. It is because there is something that is deep in my heart which I know ought to be told you, and probably I am the best person to do it. “You may feel I am exaggerating your own share in our common task of winning the war. You may ask, ‘What have I done compared with what' my boy has put up with in dodging submarines in the Atlantic or chasing Rommel across Africa?’ In your different spheres, believe me, you have done all he has done and in different degrees endured all that he has endured. For you, like him, have given all that is good in you, regardless of yourself, to the same cause for which he is fighting. Nobody, man or woman, can give more. CLEAR PICTURE SEEN. “Perhaps, constantly travelling as the King and I do through the length and breadth of these islands, I am fortunate in being able to see a clear picture of the astonishing work women are doing everywhere and of the quiet heroism with which, day in and day out, they are doing it. This picture, I know, is being reproduced in many similar aspects all over the Empire. We, indeed, are very proud of you. “How often, when I have talked with women engaged in every kind of job, sometimes physically hard or dangerous, how often when I have admired their pluck, I have heard them say, ‘lt is not much; I must be doing my best to help us win the war.’ Their courage is reinforced, too, by one of the strongest weapons of our national armoury—a sense of humour which nothing can damp. With this weapon of amazing temper that turns every way our people keep guard over their sanity and their souls. You have endured bombs and helped put out fires the enemy has kindled in our homes. You have tended those he maimed and brought strength to those he bereaved. You have tilled our land and you have, in uniform or out of it, given help to our fighting forces and made for them those munitions without which they would be powerless. In a hundred ways you have fillc-d the places of the men who have gone away to fight. SPIRITUAL LIFE. “Those both at home and abroad are counting on us at all times to be steadfast and faithful,” she said. “I know we shall not fail them, but fortified by the great experience in this war of our strength and unity, go forward with them undismayed into the future.” The Queen expressed her conviction that the right rebuilding of the national life after the war depended on. our spiritual life. While in recent tragic years many had found in religion the mainspring of courage and selflessness which they needed, we could not close bur eyes to the fact that our precious Christian heritage was threatened by adverse influences. The women of the nation must be deeply concerned with religion, and our homes were where it should start. The creative dynamic power of Christianity could help us to carry the moral responsibilities which history was placing on our shoulders.