-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