GREAT BRITAIN: Restraint Unparalleled

The man who had brought Britain through the greatest war in its history reported last week to the nation. In a 35-minute speech, marked by a halting delivery as if he were very tired, Prime Minister Winston Churchill: ¶Reviewed Britain's heroic role in a thumbnail history of World War II.

¶Revealed that the invasion of Normandy saved Britain "just in time" from a shelling by new German long-range artillery that might have left London "as shattered as Berlin."

¶ Urged that the security organization being set up in San Francisco (see INTERNATIONAL), should "not become a shield for the strong and a mockery for the weak."

¶ Called for unstinted aid to the U.S. in the war against Japan.

The speech was lit up by a blaze of Churchillian anger at Prime Minister Eamon de Valera for remaining obstinately neutral throughout the war:

"Owing to the action of Mr. de Valera, so much at variance with the temper and instinct of thousands of southern Irishmen, who hastened to the battlefront to prove their ancient valor, the approaches which the southern Irish ports and airfields could so easily have guarded were closed by the hostile aircraft and U-boats. This was indeed a deadly moment in our life, and if it had not been for the loyalty and friendship of northern Ireland, we should have been forced to come to close quarters with Mr. de Valera or perish forever from the earth. However, with a restraint and poise to which I say history will find few parallels, His Majesty's Government never laid a violent hand upon them, although at times it would have been quite easy and quite natural, and we left the De Valera Government to frolic with the German and later with the Japanese representatives to their hearts' content."

Churchill also wagged a warning finger at strong-arm politics in Europe: "There would be little use in punishing the Hitlerites ... if totalitarian or police governments were to take the place of the German invaders."

On the subject for which most of his listeners were straining their ears—the date of Britain's first general election in ten years—Prime Minister Churchill said nothing.