Report on England

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 128, 5 December 1941, Page 4

Report on England

NE of the purposes of Mr. Duff Cooper’s visit to the Dominion was to discover how we are reacting to the war. Another was to tell us how Britain is reacting; and if there has been nothing else to learn or tell the visit would still have been important. But as it happens, everything that Mr. Duff Cooper told us has been corroborated and amplified by the remarkable book, Report on England, which reached New Zealand while Mr. Duff Cooper was still here. It is not necessary to say more about this report than we say about it on Pages 6 and 7 of this issue-unless perhaps this: that it was written by an American who neither believed nor disbelieved when he left home that Britain was saving civilisation but who returned to New York convinced that tyranny had for ever missed its chance. It missed its chance because Britain, and Britain alone at that time stood across its path. When the battle of Britain began Britain had fighting planes — not enough, not nearly énough; but the best in the world just then, and the best pilots in the world to man them. It had bombers-so few that it makes us shudder to-day to think of them; an army, but so small by comparison with Germany’s, and so ill-equipped, that Germany had good reason to despise it; a navy, the best in the world in fighting efficiency; but so dangerously dispersed after the fall of France that it could nowhere put to sea without risk. Those things stood between Hitler and victory, and nothing else at all but British courage. But it was sufficient. The first battle of Britain was lost. Time was won for further preparation. Britain still stands, and now stands prepared-we can’t say it too often or recall it too often-be-cause what Mr. Duff Cooper told us last week was true; no one, rich or poor or old or young, thought of surrender. That is something that will seem more glorious to our children than it does to us, since it is not easy to recognise big events when they are happening. But if it seems amazing to our children as well as glorious, that will be because they are farther away then we kre from what Karel Capek calls the moral cliffs of Dover. For if the tribute of the American editor will warm British blood, the tribute of the Czech playwright printed on Page 12 will remind lovers of liberty all over the world that "the shores of England begin wherever the values of liberty find application."