-49- #669, Eighteenth from London British Empire is contending without a moment's surcease of slackening of effort. So it will go on--great efforts pulsating through the heart of this small island arising again all over the vast scope of the commonwealth and the Empire and not dying away even with the long fatigues monotonies and wearisome trials which the war imposes not only on the men who are fighting but on the men and women who stay at home and do all that is in them to back the soldiers at the front. We have reached the 65th month of the war and its weight hangs heavy upon us. No one knows what stresses are wrought in these times by this long persistence of strain quite above the ordinary normal life of human society. Let us be of good cheer. Both in the west and in the east, overwhelming forces are ranged on our side. Military victory may be distant it will certainly be costly but it is no longer in doubt. The physical and scientific force which our foes hurled upon us in the early years has changed sides and the British Commonwealth the United States and the Soviet Union undoubtedly possess the power to beat down to the ground in dust and ashes the prodigious might of the war-making nations and the conspiracies which assailed us. But as the sense of mortal peril has passed from our side to that of our cruel foes they gain the stimulus of despair and we tend to lose the |