Winston Churchill Says

Radio Record, Volume VIII, Issue 39, 5 April 1935, Page 14

Winston Churchill Says

Many people think that the best way to prevent war is to dwell upon its horrors. Only a few hours away by air dwells a nation of nearly 70,000,000 who have been taught from childhood to live for war. In that country all pacifist speakers and all morbid war books are forbidden and. repressed. Back to the most brutish relic of barbarism-the possibility .of terrorising the civil population. There could be something to be said for the plan of isolation if we could tow these rocky isles of ours 3000 miles across the ocean. Is it prudent, possible, to turn our backs on Burope and ignore What happens there? I hope, I pray, and, grasping the larger hope, I believe that no war may fall upon us. But if that should happen, no one can foretell where it. would end: With our wealth and vast resources we should be the only prey great enough to reward their possession and compensate them for our losses. The: ‘quarrels and intrigues about disarmament have only borne more ill-will between the nations. The story of mankind shows that war was universal and unceasing millions of years before armaments came thto being. :

To remove the causes of war we must go deeper than armaments. Let moral disarmament come, and physical disarmament will soon follow. : It seems to me that the next year or the next two years may contain a fateful turning point in our history. The only chance open is the old grim chance our forebears had to face-whether we shall submit or whether we shall prepare. Submission will entail, at the very least, the passing and division of the British Empire. Neither submission nor preparation is free from suffering and danger. , We must, without another day’s delay, begin to make ourselves at least the strongest air power in the European world. Only by this means can we prevent ourselves from being blackmailed against our wills. I look to the League of Nations. which may preserve the threatened peace of the world. I know it is fashionable in many circles to. mock at the League of Nations, but where is, then, a better hope? , Peace must. be founded upon preponderance-there is safety in numbers,