“LONG & TRYING”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 April 1943, Page 4

“LONG & TRYING”

«, MR. EDEN ON PROBABLE DURATION OF WAR. STATEMENT IN OTTAWA. OTTAWA, March 31. “Very long and very trying” was Mr. Eden’s reply today when questioned at a Press interview on the duration of the war. Mr. Eden was introduced to assembled press correspondents £>y the Prime Minister of Canada, Mr. W. L. Mackenzie King. In the last few days, Mr. Eden said, we had received cheering news from Africa. The bombing of Berlin and of other strategic centres in Germany was all to the good. Russia had continued to maintain her splendid effort. In the Pacific the Americans and Australians had achieved some brilliant feats of arms at sea, on land and in the air. China had continued her stubborn resistance to Japanese aggression. “But I would stress,” Mr. Eden added, “that despite these encouraging signs we must not be betrayed into overconfidence. We must never underrate the fomidable nature of the difficulties we have to overcome. Only arduous effort on the part of each one of the United Nations will achieve victory. Nobody would be so foolish as to forecast the duration of the war. I wouldn’t. But it will be very long and very trying.” Mr. Eden expressed deep satisfaction at the results of the Washington conversations. His object in coming to Ottawa, as in his visit to Washington, was to undertake a general exchange of views on all aspects of the war situation. ■ Mr. Eden spoke of Canada’s war effort as “truly stupendous” for a country of eleven million people. The value of the Commonwealth Air Training Plan in a general condition of war was very great indeed. It was hardly possible to exaggerate its significance. It is an enormous, maybe a decisive, contribution. The bulk of the R.A.F. training is now done in Canada. Practically none of the training now is done in England.