Death or Victory Now

Manawatu Times, Volume 65, Issue 217, 13 September 1940, Page 10

Death or Victory Now

HON. R. SEMPLE’S VIEW ON WAR “I want to make a confession to you, as I have done at other meetings I have addressed, but I do not apologise for the views I have held in the years gone by, or the attitude I have taken up in regard to this war,” said Hon. R. Semple, Minister of National Service, in closing an address to local body representatives in Palmerston .North yesterday, on the need for the formation of the Home Guard. ‘‘ I was always an implacable foe of war,” said the Minister. “I definitely detested the beastly business. ’ ’ After tracing his earlier life, the Minister said: “I preached against war, wrote against it, and I was punished and sneered at because I expressed these views. Those were my thoughts as to war, but w hen this calamity came I had to take stock of my own position. When I took a survey of the situation 1 saw there was no escape from this tragedy. The British statesmen had refused to join the armaments ring, they had compromised with these tyrants almost to the point of humiliation, but this gang of bloodhounds, the worst the world has ever known, had made up their minds that whether a nation was peaceful or not, it had to go under so that they might impose their foul, Satanic will on the world.” Had England been in the position of an invader, said the Minister, he would have sacrificed his public position, for ho believed that invasion was murder. “When the true history of this conflict is written,” he proceeded, “England will come out with clean hands. She did her best to try to stop it. “I am here to preach the doctrine of no compromise, no surrender; death or victory.”