WORDS OF CHEER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 May 1943, Page 3

WORDS OF CHEER

* ADDRESSED TO ENSLAVED EUROPE BY GENERALS SMUTS & EISENHOWER DAY OF DELIVERANCE COMING. SIGNIFICANCE OF AFRICA & MEDITERRANEAN. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, May 29. General Smuts, broadcasting' a message from the HI)- • erated countries of Africa to the enslaved and tortured peoples of Europe, said that the days of deliverance were at hand. The liberation of the Mediterranean had been only the first stage in the liberation of Europe. The armies that had fought their way through Abyssinia to Addis Ababa, the armies that had chased the enemy from Cairo to Tripoli and the shores of Tunis, and the armies that had pushed from Algiers to Bizerta and Tunis, all had been pursuing a great strategic plan that would find its climax in the invasion of Europe.

From North Cape to the Pyrenees, from Gibraltar to the mountain cliffs of the Dardanelles, shaken enemies kept fearful watch while Europe waited the days of retribution. The enemy was baffled and bewildered. The initiative in attack was in Allied hands and the element of surprise could be exploited.

General Smuts outlined the tremendous effort of organisation entailed in the North African series of campaigns, and added that the result had fully justified the conviction he had always urged on those finally responsible for Allied strategy—the conviction that the ejection of the Axis forces from Africa must be an essential preliminary to an invasion of Europe. "The achievement of this aim,” he said, “now makes possible the concentration of our overwhelming resources on the European theatre of war, and, while the world waits tense with expectation for the next step, we send tortured Europe this clarion call, ‘Be of good cheer. Be ready. The day of deliverance is coming.’ ” ENEMY MORALE JOLTED. General Eisenhower, broadcasting to Europe, said: "We have jolted the enemy's morale, for in this theatre one of the best and proudest of his armies has been utterly destroyed.” The British First Army and the American Second Corps had been tempered in the heat of battle and had become formidable fighting machines, and through them other Allied units going into fight for the first time would be better prepared and more ready to absorb the first shocks of the conflicts.

The British Eighth Army—which the enemy had' reluctantly admitted to be the finest organisation of its strength in the world—had been confronted by strange battle conditions in Tunisia and had made advances in technique and professional ability. "Beyond these benefits accruing from the North African campaign,” he added, “one of the greatest of our gains was the Allied team play that had reached a high degree of proficiency—a spirit that inspired also the French troops fighting alongside us. This demonstration of unity on the battlefield, unity in adversity as in victory, is sorely puzzling the Axis. Our solidarity terrifies them because they complacently counted on divided counsels and inter-family quarrels that have been characteristic of the Allied campaigns in former wars. “We are. ready to undertake any further task our countries may choose to assign to us. We stand as a single body determined that there will be no cessation of effort till working in concert with all other forces of the United Nations, we. shall have brought the last army of Germany, Italy and Japan to its inevitable Tunisia.”