“NO LONGER ALONE”

Waikato Times, Volume 128, Issue 21374, 19 March 1941, Page 5

“NO LONGER ALONE”

GREAT STAND AGAINST DICTATORS MR CHURCHILL AND AMBASSADOR CONFIDENT TYRANNIES MUST AND WILL RE DESTROYED (Official Wireless) (Received March 19, 11.40 a.m.) RUGBY, March 18 The Prime Minister, Mr Winston Churchill, presided at the Pilgrims’ luncheon, at which Mr J. Winant, American Ambassador, made his first public speech. Mr Churchill, in proposing Mr Winant s health, took the opportunity to “express on behalf of the British nation and Empire the sense of encouragement and fortification in our resolve” which had come from the stirring historic declaration made by Mr Roosevelt on Saturday. The Prime Minister recalled that Britain, which was a free community, governed through Parliament by the will of the people, was being subjected—men, women and children alike —to daily attacks which, if not rendered ineffective and repelled, would prove mortal, and was standing up to them with fortitude and composure and accepting the increasing privations, while making increasing efforts. This community could be said to ~ tried and proved before mankind and history to a degree and a scale and under conditions not previously known in human experience. Faults in that community there might he, but they hoped to be able to prove for all lime that such a community, founded upon long-enjoyed freedom and a steadily-evolved democracy, possessed amid the sharpest shocks the faculty of survival in high honour—indeed, in a glorious degree. “The British can now feel that they are no longer alone.” said Mr Churchill. “We know that other hearts in scores of millions beat with ours, their voices proclaim the case of which we strive, other strong hands wield hammers to shape the weapons we need, other keen, gleaming eyes are fixed in hard conviction upon tyrannies that must and will be destroyed.”

Battle of the Atlantic The Prime Minister proceeded to speak of the Battle of the Atlantic and announced the destruction of three German U-boats, which was reported yesterday—a triple success in a single day not recorded since the second month of the war, when he was able to make it public as the First Lord of the Admiralty. Describing how this great battle was now developing to its full severity, he referred to the fact that not only U-boats but a German battlecruiser crossed to the American side of the Atlantic and has already sunk some ships, not in convoy and independently routed. They had sunk ships as far west as the 42nd meridian. The Battle of the Atlantic must be done decisively if the declared policies of the Government and people of the United States were not to be frustrated, and he declared his confidence that the dangers, grave as they were, would be overcome.” ‘‘Over here, upon the approaches to our island,” continued Mr Churchill, “an intense and unrelenting struggle is being waged to bring in an endless stream of munitions and food, without which our war efforts here and in the Middle East—for that shall not be relaxed—cannot be maintained. Our losses have risen for the time being and we are applying our fullest strength and resources and all the skill and science we can command in order to meet this potentially mortal challenge. “We must regard this Battle of the Atlantic as one of the most momentous ever fought in all the annals of war.” Mr Churchill concluded: “Mr Ambassador, you share our purpose, you will share our dangers, you wif share our interests, you shall share our secrets, and the day will come when the “United States and Britair will share together the solemn bw splendid duties which are to crowr victory.” Mr Winant’s Stirring Speech Mr Winant stressed that the

of war. On every Continent and in every country, wherever there were men and women who valued freedom, Britain had friends and allies everywhere. To-day throughout Europe there were legions who yearned for Britain’s victory, which meant freedom for them as well as the great mass of common men the world over. Mr Winant declared that they were not deceived by the Nazis’ talk of a new order. They realised that there was no order or security in tyranny. They wanted what the British people wanted, they wanted what American people wanted, they wanted a friendly, civilised world oL' free peoples. They knew that the peoples of the world were never, and were not now, destined for subjugation to the will of others, and that there was no people or race charged with the responsibility or endowed with the ability to dominate the world. They had not lost faith in individual liberty and the democratic way of life. They were not content to be deprived of thoss freedoms which they knew to be essential to the welfare of man and they knew that those freedoms could be won only by a British victory. At Edge of Catastrophe Commenting on the fact that the growing independence of nations, which would have led to co-oper-ation and harmony, instead now witnessed civilisation at the edge of catastrophe, the Ambassador analysed fear as the cause. In an independent world men must cooperate or dominate or perish. Cooperation called for courage. They sought first to dominate their neighbours. Dictators .and demagogues exploited those fears, not to give freedom but to enslave. Such fears could be overcome only in the cooperation of free nations.

He ended: “The road ahead is hard. The lost years are gone. A new spirit is abroad. The free peoples are again co-operating to win a free world and no tyranny can frustrate their hopes.

policies upon which the many peoples of the United States and Britain were being drawn together in the fact of a common peril were policies to which the American people as a whole had solemnly committed themselves. It was this great public in the United States, in factories, and shipyards and on farms, who would build arsenals and granaries for the defence of the democracies and provide arms for those everywhere who with their lives were defending freedom’s frontiers. Freedom was not the cause of any one nation or group of nations. It was the cause of all men everywhere. Its history was the history of civilisation, to which all nations, not excepting those now enthralled by the Dictators, had made their notable contributions In the past. But never in any struggle between barbarism and civilisation had so much been at stake. Nazism had called into question every tenet in the faith of civilised man. The world had known tyranny before, but never tyranny more cruel and absolute or as relentlessly organised. For Nazism had stolen and run amok with the great inventions of free and inquiring minds and had I set about using them not to liberate j but to enslave the human spirit. In s the struggle against the Nazis the people of Britain neia the front line' but it did not stand alone. The Dominions and colonies were mustering their forces. America Gone Into Action America, as Mr Roosevelt said last Saturday night, “has gone into action.” It is mobilising with evergrowing speed its tremendous resources to make available the smews

“Those who now suffer and die in this effort do so for the common good of the free peoples of the earth who shall follow after them, and who, with the help of God, shall build from these sacrifices a citadel of freedom so strong that force may never again seek its destruction.”