Wellington's Words Still Prevail the station yard of a country town recently a fair-sized crowd had gathered. Lines of motor coaches were drawn up awaiting the train that was bringing men of the BEF. evacuated from Flanders. As they came out of the station the crowd' cheered them as they would a victorious army. As indeed they were; for these men were the vanguard of those who had wrested triumph from disaster. With their flanks exposed, with their communications in constant peril, with all the might Germany could put in the field and in the air against them, they had won their way to the coast where they were incessantly bombed before and after putting to sea.
By the magnificent work of the British and French Navies, by the indomitable courage of the Royal Air Force, and by the fighting spirit of the troops holding the line, the impossible had once more been achieved. Here were the men of 1940 performing this feat in face of even greater dangers than those encountered by the men of Mons.
This was no defeated force that issued from the station. Soiled, wearied and many of them ill-equipped they were cheery and confident. They had been at grips with the enemy and knew that, despite his advantages in mechanical weapons, they were more than a match foi him in fighting quality. Their "Leave it to u; was a heartening reminder to any nervous civilian that here was the stuff which, backed by all the tradition of the British Army, under good leadership, and given the proper arm or indeed any available, would never acknowledge defeat. With the British were many French and Belgians who knew not the wor surrender.
"Upon the reorganization of those who have returned from that force which set out for France last year much concentrated energy win have to be spent. Work on sorting it out and re-equipping it once more for battle. But even in its losses something of inestimable value has been gained. In a few weeks battling against colossal odds these men have become veterans, the nucleus and backbone of the army which has been building up behind their ranks; an inspiration to the new troops. It is the procedure of 1914-1918 once more, but with a difference. Then we held a line, to which fresh troops could be drafted to gain their experience of warfare in the trenches. Today the Germars have attained, at the cost which it has never been their custom to count, a coastline for which they fought in vain in the last war. But the Germans of today need not congratulate themselves that they have seen the last of the B.EF; their predecessors once made that mistake. We face the future with stiffened resolution backed by the'gallant fight and sacrifices made in Flanders.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.