Air Force Gallantry; Situation is Grave London, May 23.
"In the firing line, men irom all over the British Commonwealth of Nations are fighting with wonderful gallantry," said Mr. Alfred Duff-Cooper, Minister of Information, in a broadcast to the Empire yesterday.
"The British Expeditionary Force will yet show the Germans, to their cost, of what men of the British Empire are made! The Royal Air Force have played a heroic part. When the history of this battle comes to be written it will perhaps be recorded that the men of the Royal Air Force from far and wide of the British Commonwealth have saved France and England and all we hold precious, from disaster and defeat.
"Today, the situation is perhaps graver than at any time in the last war. That does not mean that defeat is on the horizon, but the gravity of the situation does mean that we must steel ourselves for news of reverses, and that the physical dangers of war have been brought much nearer to those whose duty lies in the British Isles. We know that there is no bound to Hitlers lust for world power, and we know in what contempt he holds all non-German races and peoples, especially those of Africa and Asia.
"I know that the peoples of the British Commonwealth overseas will play their part as worthily as the people of these islands. We hear with as great a pride as you feel of the deeds of men from the Dominions, India and the Colonies in fighting areas. We feel behind us not only the weight of vital supplies the Empire can send but the power of united resolve from every quarter of the British Commonwealth to win through to victory."—Reuter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.