Close to the War

THE HONOURABLE G. HOWARD FERGUSON: Gentlemen: We are very fortunate in the guest-speaker that has been good enough to come to us today. He had an excellent start in life. He was born of Scottish parents and having the usual Scottish curiosity, he has been poking his nose into every country of the world almost and enquiring about everybody else's business.

Mr. Philip has had quite a remarkable career. I don't propose to take any time going over it. He belongs to the Fourth Estate, that powerful section of the public that is the only dictatorial, totalitarian organization in the world-the press of the country. They mould public opinion, they say. I rather think they hammer it into shape, rather than mould it. They create trends of thought and influence governments, direct policies and I suppose before very long they will be taking over the pulpit. However, it is a great pleasure, I am sure, to introduce our good friend, Mr. Percy Philip, who at Ottawa, represents the New York Times, that well and widely known journal that has always been so friendly toward this country. (Applause.)

MR. PERCY JAMES PHILIP: I thank you for your particularly characteristic introduction. I never heard myself better described-born in Scotland, behaving as such, poking my nose into other people's business ever since. I used to say I had the largest vital space of any man. I was born in Scotland, lived for twenty-four years in France and worked for twenty years for an American newspaper owned by Jews. And now I have been sent to Ottawa for a rest. I assure you, Sir, I shall not poke my nose too much into Canadian affairs. I am more interested at the moment and only interested, in the war, and what I want to do in Ottawa is quietly try to get people over on this side to realize what that war is. That is why I gave the title to what I am going to tell you, "Close to the War", because for the last fifteen months that I stayed in France, I was constantly close to the war, and then the war began coming too close to me.

I want to begin my talk with the flat statement that I am sure we can win this war. (Applause.) Having said that, however, I feel that I must add quickly that from what I have seen and know, it is going to be a long, grim business. Nobody should take it for granted that we will win this war. I know that Mr. Winston Churchill does not and he ought to know. Just because it is different from the last war does not mean at all that it is going to be easier. It is really much more difficult. It is terribly grim now for nearly all the people in Europe, for all those people who have lost the war already and who are in the Nazi grip--their pride broken, their businesses ruined, their families scattered, many in prison, their hopes gone, and themselves near starvation and living in fear. It is grim enough in England, in London, Coventry, Birmingham, and all these other stricken towns where night after night the strain continues of having to live and work and pay taxes and try to sleep to the wailing of the air-raid sirens and the beat and bark of the barrage and the scream and thud of falling bombs crashing through homes and hospitals and churches and cinemas and sometimes factories. I had a little of that--very little by comparison-and I assure you it isn't funny. When these planes come diving at you at five hundred miles an hour with a siren-like apparatus attached, and you wait through the eternity of a split second to know if you are still alive or if the bomb dropped wide, it tears the heart out and ties the nerves in little knots.

"You get used to it," people write me from England. I doubt if I ever would and I know from experience that I would never get used to losing my sleep night after night. Let us pay tribute to those people in England (applause) who are in the front line-chins up, undismayed. The odd thing about them is they are unheroic. The other day I read in some newspaper a letter from someone in London describing how he had been waiting at a corner for a bus with a little crowd of people. An alarm sounded but nobody paid much attention. They went on reading the evening paper. They heard the whistling scream of a dropping bomb. "That one's coming near us," said somebody and they all lay down flat on the ground. There was a crashing explosion a few blocks away, then another, then silence. Everybody got up, dusted his clothes and went on waiting for the bus. They knew that just around the corner people had been killed-but it was their job to take it and carry on. People who behave like that deserve to win.

Here is a letter from my brother who lives on a kind of island on the east coast of England-a little flat island about six miles long and half a mile broad. He said "The news is nothing much. Since the Blitz started we have had about twenty-five high explosive bombs and about fifty incendiaries on the island, to say nothing of the major portion of an enemy bomber. The total damage has been very slight. I only hope the Hun will keep up that standard of inaccuracy. The nights are a bit noisy as we are on the route to and from London and we have moved our beds down to the living-room where they look a bit odd alongside the piano. We have seen a few battles overhead and two enemy machines brought down which gave us much joy. For recreation we still have nine holes of the golf course." Although he is the age of sixty, an Air Raid Precaution warden, and he goes out on duty when high explosives and incendiaries fall, he doesn't mention it except in this way: "We put out a few incendiaries which fell in the village last week." And he has the impertinence to say "The news is nothing much."

Gentlemen, that casual manner of the British which, in time of peace, earnest people like the Germans and the French find so irritating, is perhaps our greatest asset now. It is a deceptive mannerism.

The other day I was reading a book by Captain Rene de Chambrun, who is M. Laval's son-in-law, but otherwise quite a nice fellow. In it he tells how on the 18th of May he was told by his General to go into Arras, which some of you will remember, and see what was happening. From somewhere outside he could see quite well what was happening. The town was evacuated and a handful of British troops was holding it. The Germans were pushing a strong attack from the southeast and de Chambrun felt that he had enough information to satisfy his General. But the English Colonel, who was with him said, "Oh, let's go down into the town, just for the fun of it." Getting in wasn't so bad, de Chambrun writes, but when they got in they were kept listening to two rival tellers of Scotch stories until the Officer in Command said, "If you fellows want to get back you'll have to run for it." They did have to run for it amid a hail of bombs and shells. "I am still wondering," de Chambrun wrote, "what that Englishman meant by going into the town 'for the fun of it'."

It is that spirit which brings us bobbing back. It is the spirit of the men of the "Rawalpindi" and the "Jervis Bay", and of those boys with their Spitfires and their

Hurricanes who have held the air in the daylight and will yet succeed in holding it by night. But here I am going to say one word to you: If this night bombing of industrial areas in England goes on at the present rate, you fellows over here will have to put your backs into production in a fashion that you don't yet realize. (Applause.) Herr Hitler has announced that he is the toughest leader the world has ever known. It is probably true. Alexander, Julius and all the other Caesars, and many of them were queer customers, Tamerlane, Genghis Kahn, the Normans, Napoleon--none of them were as tough, as inhuman, as maniacal as this recluse of Berchtesgaden who ordered his old companion, Rohm, to shoot himself, who has kept Schuschnigg in prison, who has broken every word he ever gave to anybody and glories in it. His is the toughness of the deformed-the vitally deformed. And he is surrounded by tough men-Goering, Himmler, Hess, Goebbels and all the rest of the Nazi bandits. He is followed by tough men-these young soldiers who used to slip barefoot across the snow last winter up to an outpost of the Maginot Line in the hope of catching an unwary French 'prisoner, these dive bombers and tank crews who hammered the French Army to pieces in Belgium and came back at us again and again in Dunkerque, who fought it out day after day over the Channel with our lads and didn't give up even although they were shot down in hundreds, who come back night after night over England. They are tough-terribly tough. They are worth fighting and beating.

But I am going to let you into a secret. They are not all tough. There is a weak strain in the rank and file. Some of you remember how stubbornly they fought their machine-guns in the last war, but how they whined "Kamerad" and grovelled when you got at them. This Nazi Army, I believe, and I have been told by very good authorities, is not as tough en masse as the old Imperial Army. French people and Americans who have watched it in the occupied parts of France tell me that these troops of Hitler's tough men are not really as tough as he would like them to be. They sing mechanically and get drunk wistfully. They went swimming last summer down at Biarritz and Saint Jean-de-Luz in batches, as if they were on parade. Every man took off his tunic, every man took off his trousers, all in the same action. They went in swimming, not joyfully at all, but automatically. One young German soldier said to a friend of mine as they talked about the invasion of England, "You are beaten, but we are sunk. There is no hope for us."

There you have the weak streak-the weak streak in a subject people. But we Britishers, Canadians, Australians, Afrikanders and New Zealanders are tough all

through, from Winston Churchill down to the little Cockney children who brag to each other that the bomb that fell in their street was the biggest ever. We are tough all through, resilient and good-humoured because we are in this war of our own sweet choice and not because of anybody's fanatical lust for power and vital space. The whole world is our vital space-especially for a Scotsman. We made it. You here in Canada more than any others have hewn it for yourselves out of the forests and the wilderness, and I know you aren't going to let anybody take it from you or tell you how you are to run it. (Applause.) There is still vital space here and in Australia and Africa, for decent people who come peacefully. There is none for brigands.

Gentlemen, it still remains that Hitler & Company are tough. They have spread their conquest from the Arctic Circle to the Pyrenees and they are pushing down into the Balkans, which their little boy satellite, Mussolini, adds his nuisance value in the Mediterranean. Nevertheless, tough as these people in London are, tough as we all are, we have a tremendous job on our hands if we are going to dislodge them and free these peoples already conquered. The Germans keep- pounding at London, at the heart of the Empire, and now the industrial Midlands, knowing if the heart gives way, the limbs-I mean you-will lose their strength. Have you ever seen two boxers in the ring, one of them pounding again and again at the other's heart? That is what is happening in the bombardment of England. But the heart has held out and now the limbs are growing stronger.

Still, we haven't won--remember that. Are we going to win? It is going to take everything every one of us has got. As you know, I have been living in France ever since the last war and spent last winter and this summer there. I saw what Hitler's blitzkrieg can be really like--what we and you may have to face one of these days. It began on the morning of May 10th when he invaded Holland and Belgium despite all his promises. I was in Nancy and during the early part of the night we had the usual air-raid alarms. Then, just before dawn I heard things coming down as well as going up. They were coming down hard and I could see some fair-sized fires on the other side of the railroad station where the air field was. Later, I found that seventeen French aeroplanes had been destroyed on the field before they got into the air. There were nineteen at Toul and twenty-three near Chalons-sur-Marne. In all, the Germans claim and the French admit, that nearly three hundred aeroplanes were destroyed on the ground that night.

Four days later I was in Belgium, trying to get to the front, but I found that the front was coming to me with a speed that was remarkable. Gentlemen, people criticize the French and Belgian armies for cracking under the strain of that attack. You fellows who were at Vimy, in the Somme, in the Ypres Salient and elsewhere, know something of what the Germans can do in the way of war. Believe me, all that was nothing to the attack along the Meuse last May. It was an avalanche. It poured down from the air and along the ground, mass after mass of exploding steel. Of course the French and the Belgians and our fellows weren't ready for it. We didn't have anything like the number of aeroplanes and tanks we should have had. We hadn't been preparing for war of that sort and it is no good saying we should have been. Let us cut out the criticism and get on with what is ahead of us still. (Applause.) That joint plane and tank attack was something that I don't believe could have been stopped even by the Maginot Line. Its velocity was tremendous.

That army of Hitler's hasn't been beaten. It is still there, as numerous, as well equipped and as well organized as ever. We are holding, but we have still got to beat it. There is only one thing we can be proud of: the decision of the British Government and the two Commanders to take the army out of Dunkerque, and the way in which that was done. (Applause.) And there let us be fair. We should make a bow to the French Army, who held very well, and many of whom died on the right, covering us; and to the French Navy, which at that time helped us-make no mistake-in the evacuation. I don't believe any other people except the British would have tried to save and could have saved that Expeditionary Force. I know the French didn't think it could be done. The Germans thought they had us cornered and sunk. That was for us, we will probably find later, the turning point of the war. It was in a sense the first Battle of the Marne--the first check to the enemy, but now we are in for that long war we had between 1915 and 1918, that long war of the trenches, with the Channel for our Churchill Line. It is tough, but we have got to depend on the English people to keep on taking it.

Now, what of France: It was their Army and the Belgian right wing which had to take the brunt of the attack, and on May 16th, a French Colonel at Valenciennes told me that the battle was over. "One Army has been completely wiped out," he said, "We shall have to begin over again." The Germans never gave them time. Again I say, you have got to give Jerry his due. He is worth fighting. He is going to be worth beating. And don't think the French and Belgian soldiers didn't fight. They were swamped, overwhelmed by this mechanized monster. I doubt if any troops or any defence system could have withstood that initial impact of Hitler's war machine.

We kept hoping that General Weygand, who had succeeded General Gamelin, would be able to stand on the Somme and on the Aisne, and if these failed, on the Loire. But he could not get his troops moved fast enough. For eight months the French Army had been moving along certain grooves and it could not be suddenly switched from being a static defence force into mobile columns. The French were in a sense the prisoners of a formula which at the time had turned out to be the wrong formula. Also, and this is very important, the Germans had immense superiority in the air and bombed day and night, from dawn to dusk, and sometimes at night, every railway junction, every important crossroad, every bridge and viaduct between the French Armies in the north and the great mass of men in the Maginot Line and in reserve in the south. They kept thrusting forward deeper and deeper behind these dreadful moving columns of refugees, and by the beginning of June we all knew that in so far as France was concerned the war was over.

I just want to make a little reference to that bombing, the systematic way in which it was done. It was the 17th of June. I had spent the night at Cambrai, which many of you will remember. I will tell you a little anecdote about that. Just as I was leaving, a woman said "Do you think we should leave?" I said, "Well, you will know by tomorrow." She said, "You know, my mother and I didn't leave during the last war. I was just a baby. We stayed over here and we were quite all right. The Canadians used to shell and all the shells fe11 on that boulevard over there and they always missed the railway station."

Well, the Germans didn't miss the railway station that morning. I put my kit in the railway station, with my typewriter and other things, thinking I would take a train. I was with Taylor Henry, of the Associated Press, and we decided it didn't look as though there would be any train that morning. We went in to town and bought a couple of bicycles. Just as we got back to the station--we weren't further than the length of this room from it--we heard a fellow come on the station and-one, two, three--he was just dropping bombs like that. It wasn't a nice moment. We lay down quickly, of course. He just cleaned that station up and all day long, as we cycled back, we could see everything else going up in fire.

I may tell you, too, that the last sight I had of your monument on Vimy Ridge, was as I came on along the road from Cambrai to Amiens. I could see it gleaming white, standing high on the right-hand side. Gentlemen, I was glad to hear later that the Germans said it had not been hurt, has not been destroyed in any way. It is still standing there and you will remember the land on which it stands belongs to Canada. I know that none of you fellows will want that to remain permanently within enemy occupation. (Applause.) That monument will be dedicated again with new glory and new honour.

Now, we come to a very controversial matter-the Vichy Government. Ever since I came over here, I have found a tendency to ascribe the French defeat to fifth column work and treachery. It is a long, controversial matter. A lot of French people didn't have their mind and hearts in the war, that is true. They were all worried about how to improve their own country, but militarily, they were absolutely licked in May and June, and during the confusion, with all those people evacuating the north and the towns and the cities, a few men seized the Government and made an armistice with the Germans because they believed that we would be licked too. That was their vital mistake. They predicted their whole position on the fact that within a week or two we would be defeated and it was much better that they should in the moment of panic make a peace with the Germans. But we haven't weakened, we are still fighting, (applause) and we are going on fighting. That has made an enormous difference in France. They know now in France that their only hope is that we shall go on fighting and that we shall win.

The last Frenchman with whom I talked in France when I left in September was an Alsatian, at the Spanish frontier. He was right on the opposite side of the country from his home. He hadn't had any news of his wife and children for five months. They were still in Alsace, and he was getting no letters or word of any kind. He knew the Germans were turning people out of Alsace, as they are now turning them out of Lorraine. There was just nothing he could do about it. Once he found I was English he kept saying, "But the war isn't over yet. I know you English will hold and we will fight again. We aren't finished yet."

That was only one man, but during those two and a half months, or nearly three months that I stayed in France after the armistice, I found that spirit all the time, everywhere, among the common people. There is no thought in my mind that the French will ever co-operate with the Germans in fighting us. It just isn't possible. (Applause.) That spirit of revolt against the Germans is getting stronger than ever.

The Vichy Government is made up of two men--Marshal Petain and M. Pierre Laval. The old Marshal was persuaded at Bordeaux to vote against continuing the war and to seek an armistice, by Laval and those others that believed that, with France beaten, we couldn't win, and they would be able to obtain honourable terms from the Nazis. The man who persuaded the Marshal was Pierre Laval. Now, Pierre Laval seems to have been wrong. We haven't been beaten and we are not going to be beaten, and France has not got honourable terms from Germany. Her people are held in an iron grip. They cannot send a letter, or cross from one part of the country to another. They have no work, little food, little liberty and no hope. From Lorraine, as from Alsace, they are being expelled in trainloads to make room for Hitler's Germans-thrown out with a suitcase and thirty dollars of all their possessions. Their rich farms, factories, their shops and their homes are confiscated.

Hitler hasn't kept his word with the French and they know it. Then he had the impertinence to suggest recently that he would release some of the eighteen hundred thousand French prisoners he holds, if the Vichy Government would hand over some ports and air fields from which he could attack England and would collaborate in making a free peace. Laval was ready to accept. That man would sacrifice the last shred of his own and his country's honour and independence to satisfy his hatred of the British and his cockeyed belief in himself as a great statesman. But the Marshal wouldn't accept. He knows now that his countrymen have recovered from their panic fear of last June, that the British bulldog won't let go, that the Nazis are not to be trusted, and that both the tide of popular feeling in France, and of the war, has begun to turn. Laval's friend, Mussolini, has had a most unfortunate time in Greece. Hitler has had to go out of his way again to make a new compact with his former enemies, the Communists.

These are signs that there is a weakness, that there is not a complete mastery of the situation on the side of the Axis. The Marshal is an upright man. He admitted the other day in a broadcast that he has a rope round his neck. He has to submit to the conditions under which he signed the armistice. But he has shown added strength in the last weeks and he is not admitting that the Germans shall go one hair's breadth beyond the terms of the armistice. For an old man of eighty-four to take up that position strongly, is, to my mind, extremely encouraging. At the same time, he has to conform to public demand for a clean-up in France. I am not going to go into the past but all of you remember that there was much need of it. He has, at the same time he is resisting the Germans, to try to build up a new state and a new conception of decency and integrity in public life, but in doing that he is also working to help his countrymen avoid compromise with the Germans or ever doing anything which will dishonour again the name of France.

You will say--but what about Dakar? My answer is the same. The great majority of the French people would rather we had taken Dakar and raised all North Africa to fight on our side. The attempt was made either too soon or too late--I think, myself, too soon. There are all kinds of intricate questions of personal and professional jealousy, of amour propre and pride involved. We British are always believers in letting things evolve slowly, in allowing for natural growth. That has been the secret of our success. It seemed to be the wise thing not to be too precipitate in our dealings with the French in Africa. It is an extremely complicated situation at the moment.

Everybody is asking, "What is Weygand going to do What is Weygand doing?" Weygand is a soldier, primarily a soldier. Like all soldiers, all except the political soldiers, he did not like the way things were being done in France and he was immediately accused of being Nazi and Fascist. That wasn't true. He just wasn't in agreement with his Government. And at the last moment he was suddenly thrown into fighting this most tremendous battle of all history, the Battle of France, which was already lost. He is an old man, a man with a great reputation, but I am certain that General Weygand is not, if he can possibly help it, going to go down to his grave leaving behind him only the memory that he was beaten in that tremendous battle. If he can win another battle he is going to do it, and the only chance to do it is with us in Africa. But he is a cautious man, he will take his time, and I think, as I say, as long as we are holding, as long as we can push Mussolini up and down, we don't want to hurry the French. We will let that situation develop. There was much provocation at the time but everything, it seems to me, points to the certainty that the French are with us and the French will rally again to us as soon as they can see the chance.

I noticed in one of the newspapers the other day, a story by one of my friends in Vichy, that when Marshal Petain went to the Cathedral at Clermont-Ferrand, two German soldiers tried to take a photograph of him. One finds German soldiers all over the place, even in the unoccupied zone. Immediately the French crowd showed its disapproval by beginning to sing the Marseillaise. Nobody had sung it since the defeat and the capitulation. That little story was to me a clear indication of how sentiment is moving. It confirms all that I saw and heard during the three months I spent in France after the armistice was signed-that the French may have been overwhelmed but they aren't beaten. They were compelled to lay down their arms but they are not conquered.

And we are going to need them. Don't let us ever forget that. We may be able to resist the German onslaught but we shall never win the war without the sympathy of these invaded peoples, without the possibility of their ultimate revolt. The Dutch and Belgian colonies are giving us their aid. There are Czechs, Poles, Danes, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians and Frenchmen in our armies. That is the way we beat Napoleon-not ourselves alone, but by drawing to us all the people who together hate tyranny and want freedom.

I read how on Armistice Day there was an air-raid alarm in Paris. The Royal Air Force had flown over and dropped flowers on the Arc de Triomphe and the grave of the Unknown Soldier. Gentlemen, that is the right kind of propaganda. That goes straight to the hearts of the millions of French people who are with us--who respect the Marshal, still have confidence in General Weygand, loathe the Nazis and despise Laval.

But there is still a long hard road in front of us until we are able to get rid of this nightmare in which we are all living and restore decency and freedom. We are going to have many heartbreaks and sorrows. We are going to have to be very patient. When you feel impatient over here I want you to think of those other peoples who have already lost the war--of those Poles and Danes and Dutch people, the Belgians, Norwegians and French, all decent people, who are living, starving and still resisting under the heel of the Nazi oppressor. For them, all that makes life pleasant is gone. We may have to pay heavy taxes. We may have to work long hours and know the anguish of having those dear to us in the front line on the land, on the sea and in the air. But when we think of those other people who day and night are tormented by the presence of the enemy-you know we have never known occupation, we Anglo-Saxons; the Scots have, but it is a long time ago and we have retaliated-what we have to put up with seems like nothing. Let us thank God daily that we are still free and can go on working and fighting to stay free from that dreadful Nazi domination which has filled Europe with sorrow and suffering.

I think of people like my own cook, a grand old Frenchwoman. She went back, when we finally left, to her own little village, occupied by Germans. I know that woman is living every day, wanting to strangle every German she sees, and that goes for the immense majority of the French people, but they had to take it.

If we are going to win we have got to fight. It is the rule of life. There isn't anything worth having that we didn't have to fight for, and we have got to fight hard. The other evening I was listening to a speech on the radio. I tuned in in the middle, and though I didn't know who the speaker was I went on listening for the voice was so very sober and kindly and brave, and what the speaker said was good. Then I heard this phrase which I shall never forget, "Happiness is liberty and liberty is courage." It was your Air Marshal, Billy Bishop, who was speaking and that phrase of his, it seems to me, might well be the slogan under which Canada should fight. It tells the whole story of why we are at war--for happiness. What is happiness?--liberty; what is liberty?--courage.

These people in France who have lost their liberty know how true that is, but I am sure they have not lost their courage. There are signs every day that they are recovering from that dreadful panic which overcame them when the surprise attack of last May caught them unready. They have some bad leaders and bad men in their ranks. Their press is contemptible and, I say it honestly, for it is held in contempt by its readers and even by the newsboys who sell the papers. But the mass of these people have no other aim and hope than to help us throw the Germans back over the Rhine and Moussolini into his Mare Nostrum.

Strange stories are reaching us of developments in Africa, and even stranger stories may reach us soon of trouble within France. The Germans are beginning to squeeze the Vichy Government hard, which. is another sign of weakness. Do not let us be impatient. These things have to work themselves out. The only thing we can be sure of is, that we are on the right road and we can keep on the right road, and that these German victories of last spring, while they have had enormous consequences, aren't final victories. They are acts of brigandage and piracy. They were mechanical victories. Now, our tough man, Hitler, is in a fight with real tough men, with men who know what they are fighting for and intend to go on fighting until they have won.

I want to tell you, before I sit down, a little anecdote. One night at the beginning of the war I was wakened in my bed in Paris by an air-raid alarm. It was one of the practice raids before Germans began dropping bombs, so I went to sleep again and I dreamed. I dreamed that I had got into a great long room, about as big as this hall, with a huge window that looked out on snow-clad mountains. I confess to you that I was terribly frightened. I knew I shouldn't be there and that there was a lot of danger. Then I heard someone enter the room. I slipped behind a marble column and stood trembling as I saw a man walk across to the great window and look out over those snow-clad mountains. The perspiration was dripping off me, as it does when I am frightened. Then the man turned and

I saw him come across the room. It was Adolf Hitler. I was in his famous Obersalzburg eerie at Berchtesgaden. His face was drawn and haggard. He paced up and down in front of the window once or twice, looking out. Then he walked over to his desk, pulled out the second drawer on the right-hand side, took out a revolver and raised it to his temple-then, of course, I awoke. One always does in dreams just before the bang comes.

But here is a curious thing. On my second night in Canada, about a year later, I dreamed again that dream which I had almost forgotten. Now, I don't believe much in dreams or omens, but I do believe in subconscious foresight and I am telling you of that dream quite seriously because I believe that it will be in that way that this war will end. When that end will come, no one can foretell. We are not engaged in any little war. This is one of those major earth-movements which shape humanity into new patterns. It will leave no man's life unaffected. If we lose, there will be an end to law and liberty as we have known them, just as there was when the German hordes swept down on the Roman Empire and plunged Europe into the Dark Ages.

If we win, and we can win--it is for you to say we shall win--there will be a new law and a new order. But if we are to win we must hold hard by that courage which is freedom and to that freedom which is happiness. (Applause.)

THE HONOURABLE G. HOWARD FERGUSON: Gentlemen, so that we may know what one Scotsman thinks of another, I have asked Dr. Parker to express our appreciation to the speaker.

THE REVEREND STUART C. PARKER, D.D.: Mr. President, Guests and Members of the Empire Club: It is a very great honour for one who is not a member of the Club to express your thanks and appreciation to the speaker.

There was a time when I, myself, did not see the value and the significance of the war correspondent. I must say, in extenuation, that I was very young at that time. The war cured me. During the war one lived intensively and by no means extensively. One saw the little bit in which one's work was carried on and knew nothing else. The first man of my own Scottish parish that was killed and appeared on our Honour Roll never knew where he was. He landed in the dark at Boulogne, he went up to the line in the dark, he went into his place and was brought out dead in the dark. So he didn't know very much about the war. I know now that the war correspondent is not only one of the most remarkable figures today but one of the most useful. He is required, in the first place, to collate the facts over a wide front, as no soldier-part of the army ever can or would be allowed to do. Then, secondly, it is his task to give to us the atmosphere surrounding the whole situation, and he conveys that, as Mr. Philip has conveyed it to us today, by relating his own little intimate observations and telling what he has sensed in his going about from place to place. I, now, with maturer judgment marvel at the war correspondent for one thing that may not appeal to everyone here as a reasonable cause for wonder. It is not that he braves all sorts of dangers in order to write, it is that he writes at all, because I am perfectly sure that most of us in this room, in the atmosphere in which Mr. Philip has composed many of his despatches, all of them interesting and all of them illuminating, would think of doing nothing but getting under some kind of cover. But the war correspondent and his typewriter cannot afford to pay any heed to it at all, lest his living goes. So I don't know whether this courage is of the very highest moral order, but that it exists, no man can possibly doubt.

Mr. Ferguson has just been saying to me that this is the most human account of things that we have heard recently. (Applause.) I am only sorry that it is not possible for Mr. Philip to make it even more human by relating, as one cannot do in an address, some of the even more intimate, personal details which he has it in his power to tell.

Now, I am sure you have noticed that I have kept away from the fact of his being a Scotsman, and not only that, the most superior kind of a Scotsman, the son of a Scottish Minister. It is a well known fact that Scotsmen--there is nobody here, I am sure, would contradict it--are the best rulers in the world, as well as being the rulers of the world in fact. I would venture to say that Scotch correspondents are the very best and the most reliable correspondents in the world.

Now, I think if I make a little boast to that mild extent, you may let me away with it. I won't say any more about Mr. Philip's ancestry and nationality, because there are some people here and there-I don't admire them-who can't stand hearing too much about the Scotch. I might perhaps tell you a story, before I sit down, to show that we are under no illusion about that, we Scotch people. This is an old chestnut now but I had the honour to bring it to this country, so I can safely repeat it, even though you have heard it.

This story is about a big Australian soldier in the last war who, when in hospital in London, was visited by an old lady, one of many other visitors doing good work for the convalescent and sick soldiers. She bored him to death and he replied very little to her remarks. In one pause, to make conversation, she said to him, "You know I am Scotch". He said, "Yes ma'am." Another long pause. Then to resume the conversation and put some pep into it, she said to him, "I suppose you have lots of Scotch in Australia". "Oh, yes, ma'am," he said, "but rabbits are our worst pest." (Laughter.)

After hearing Mr. Philip I think you will agree that there are Scots who are not pests but who are doing a very excellent service for us who are not actually in the thick of things, by letting us know, not only the bare facts, but the atmosphere that surrounds them. I am perfectly sure that with the thanks of the Empire Club, Mr. Philip, there goes to you the assurance that forever hereafter we shall read your despatches with a new interest, and, knowing where you come from, with a new confidence. (Applause.)