Mr. Churchill has never minimized our perils nor the deficiencies we still have to endure, and he is therefore the more entitled fo dwell on the good things—the destruction of Italy's east African empire, the splendour of the Battle of Britain (which like the Marne in 1914 may yet prove to have been the turning point of the war) and the signs that we are beginning to get the upper hand in the Battle of the Atlantic, He rallied Lord Winterton on his consistent gloom-mess with delightful wit, "He seems to practise a sort of inverted Coueism," said Mr. Churchill. "Every day when you get up you say to yourself, We can easily lose this war in the next four months'—you say it with great emphasis and go on your daily task invigorated."
Many people think that if only from a propaganda point of view we do not make nearly enough of the superb fighting by our forces in Abyssinia. The reports from G. H. Q. Cairo are largely to blame, being as and uninspiring as they can possibly be. Yet there should be other means of giving life to this amazing story. Since Addis Ababa was regained and the Duke of Aosta surrendered Abyssinia has been relegated to a few inches on all inside page. The rounding up and destruction of the remaining enemy forces, numbering many thousands, must have been as arduous as any previous operations. Have you ever seen a contour map of Abyssinia, a jumble of tertific mountains rising almost perpendicularly from pathless valley, extending for thousands of miles? And to these difficulties must be added the torrential rains. If the Germans had achieved what our men in Abyssinia have and are doing, Goebbels and Haw-Haw would have made the world ring with it.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.