Field-Marshal Viscount Allenby was accorded a great reception at Bury St, Edmunds, where he was presented with the honorary free dom of the borough.
Lord Allenby said now that the war was over they had come to engage in the battle of reorganizetion and restoration. In this battle we should require all our energy, patience, and forbearance. After the great war wars were still continuing and other wars were threatening. It was not surprising to find financial and commercial disturbances and a great deal of economic unrest. To put these matters right would require all our patience, firm determination, and free, generous collaboration and ce-operation, which alone would carry us through, It was not going to be supposed that Great Britain, which had come out as victor in the greatest war the world had ever known was going to be broken up and to fall a victim to internal strife. We were bound together by a bond of common sacrifice and suffering, and all classes must work together now to rebuild and to recreate an England and a Great Britain that shall be a model to humanity.
Through many generations we had been looked up to by the world as an example of stability and liberty, and now more than ever the eyes of the world were turned upon us, and the young nations were looking to us to cuidance and help, and we owed it to ourselves as much as to them that we gave them that guidance and help. We had their respect and confidence and we must retain it. Every wave of opinion in Great Britain and Ireland' was watched by all the inhabitants of Syria, Palestine, Arabia, and Egypt. That was not a dark country at all. The people were just as clever as we were. It depended on us very much what the future of these countries would be. If Palestine, Syria, Arabia, and India had contented populations, free from political unrest, their future would be not only great for themselves but for the benefit of the whole world. If we had a disturbed East it would be a very great danger for the Empire and would retard our progress for generations.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.