"Our relations with Vichy and the possibilities of an open. breach with the Vichy Government, evident~ ly: raised the military and' strategic ileance of these movements to the very highest point, German poison was spreading throughout the country and the revolt in Iraq, perhaps beginning prematurely, en= abled us to take necessary measures to correct the evil, but we must not rejoice or give way to jubila~ tion while we are engaged in operations of this diMeulty" and when the reaction of the Germans still remains obscure and unknown, "It is very easy for critics, with out troubling too much about our Fesources, and even without a sense of time and distance, to clamour for action now here, now there, without a cursory examination of the Alas, but the House will best guard its own dignity and authority by refraining from taking sweeping superficial views, "Others have said that we must not follow a handatominouth strategy, We must regain the initiative and import to all operations that, sense of mastery and design which ho Germans so often. display, Nobody agrees with that more than T do, but it is a great deal easier said than done, especially while the enemy possesses vastly superior and many strategic advantages, For all those resources _and many strategic advantages. For all those reasons T have never encouraged, any hope of a short and easy war.
"Nevertheless, it would be a mis-ake 4o go to the other extreme and belittle the remarkable achievements of our country and its armed forces, There are many things for which We may be thankful, The air attack fon this island hus. rot overwhelmed us, Indeed, we have risen through strengthened and glorified, There is no truth in the statement that the production capacity of our factories fs falling off at an alarming rate, Tt may not be going so fast og we would like, and if anyone can tell us how to' make it go. faster, he will be rendering a great service, but it is not simply "a question: of giving very strident orders and demands, There is much more than that in making the whole of our factories go properly, But It is the exact reverse of the truth to say the productivity is falling off at an alarming rate, "In guns and tanks, for instance, the monthly average for the first quarter of 1041 was 60 per' cent, greater than in the last quarter of 1940. 'The output for the month of May was the highest yet reached and more than double the monthly rate for the last quarter of 1940, We have not been overwhelmed by air allacks, and our production, far from Being beaten down by' dis organization from the attacks, has been increasing at a very high rate,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.