What Mr. Churchill Meant

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 139, 20 February 1942, Page 4

What Mr. Churchill Meant

warned us that the bad news we had then had was going to be worse we begin to understand what he meant. We begin to realise too how much misery lay behind his confession that until America joined us he had been compelled to appease Japan with British humiliations-the closing of the Burma road, the Shanghai insults, the encirclement of Hongkong, the open and impudent strangling of British trade. Mr. Churchill endured all that because he could not, without criminal recklessness, have started a war with Japan while Britain was still alone. He endured what it cost him personally, and he resisted the temptation to defend his policy publicly until silence could be maintained no longer. Then he told us with devastating frankness what the war facts had always been. To-day we know. We know why Malaya was not held, why the defence of Singapore was a gamble from the attack on Pearl Harbour, why Japan has captured or neutralised every allied base in the East but one. We know that Russia has not succeeded in breaking the German armies, or in clearing the Crimea; that the R.A.F. has not been able in the meantime to disrupt German industry; that we have lost most of our gains in Libya; that we have not been able to clear the Mediterranean, make our convoys safe in the Atlantic, or maintain unbroken supply lines anywhere in the Pacific. We all know these things now, and the knowledge should keep us silent and humble. But any newspaper, in almost any part of the world, can start a hue and cry for scapegoats and be sure of strong support. ' And that of course is not war, and not strength. It is nerves and short sight. It is an invitation to all the latent tyranny and bigotry in every community to cry out for an end to democracy; to all the fanatics and conspirators to start subversive movements; to defeatists to demand a negotiated peace; to our enemies to double their efforts on our home front. Mr. Churchill made a mandate from Parliament a condition of his continued leadership. It ought to be as plain that a united nation is a condition of his successful leadership. Which does not mean that there should be no criticism. There should be criticism whenever the facts justify criticism-of persons, and also of policies. But there should also be courage. And courage means accepting bad news at home as bravely as the soldiers accept the blows that make the. news, 3 weeks after Mr. Churchill