First of all, in the name of the Government I wish to thank the Manager of this theatre for allowing me to talk to you for a few minutes to-night on the very urgent subject of National Service.

I shall not detain you from your entertainment more than five minutes but in the very limited time at my disposal I do wish to try to impress upon you how vitally urgent the question of National Service is.

I also want to make it quite clear that this speech is entirely non-political and that, whatever Government was in power, if I had been asked to come here to-night to address you on National Service I should certainly have done so.

It is now an acknowledged fact that at the time of the crisis last September Britain was ill-prepared to face a war had it been forced upon her.

The situation to-day is very different. Some of our potential enemies like to regard us as decadent, but we certainly are not, and the positively staggering things that have been done in the way of re-armament in the last eight months prove that quite conclusively. Our Navy, Army and Air Force are to-day equipped with the most modern and most deadly weapons in the world.

Moreover, if a war is forced upon us, from the ends of the world, men, money and metal will stream into our shores, because our resources are not those of a medium-sized Nation of fifty millions, as our enemies would sometimes like to think, but of a great Commonwealth of nations, five hundred million strong, with many potential [2] allies in addition.

How, then, you may ask, if our Fighting Forces are in fine trim and we have such enormous resources behind us, could any enemy power hope to defeat us in a new world-war.

I will tell you. Modern science has changed world conditions to such a degree that a new factor has entered into strategy. It is the Time factor. If a powerful enemy could disrupt our national life by a continuous, devastating bombardment; if they dropped thousands of tons of explosives hour by hour, day after day, and night after night, for a period of perhaps a week, we might be brought to our knees before we could draw upon our world-wide resources.

And now, I must tell you the truth. There is one country which our experts believe capable of doing that should our Air Force suffer an initial defeat in battle.

To-day it is a credibly reported that Germany alone has twenty thousand military planes. So, although our latest types are unquestionably better than hers, nation for nation we could still not possibly hope to defeat her in the air.

Now I will ask you to visualise the result of such an attack upon an unprepared civilian population.

Communications will be cut, docks bridges and railways destroyed so that supplies can no longer come through. Power Stations will be put out of action so that light and heat will be cut off. Sewerage systems will be wrecked so that pestilence would soon stalk among the ruins.

You may say, perhaps,: “But if our Air Force is any good at all, would not the same apply to the other Countries?” There lies the crux of the whole matter. They are prepared; we are not. [3]

In the totalitarian states every man, woman and child has been regimented. Each has some duty to perform in the event of war and been trained to tackle it. After each raid is over they will stream out in their thousands, each to his allotted job; to tend the wounded, put out the fires, repair the drains, mend the telegraph cables and attend immediately to other vital matters which will enable them to carry on without falling into a state of anarchy.

That has been achieved by methods which are absolutely alien to our British love of freedom. The people of those Countries are not free. Their work, their play, every hour of their day, every day of the week, is ordered. They no longer have even the shadow of freedom.

Yet, because we are free, should we be less prepared to face an emergency ? No. On the contrary. It is absolutely vital that we should be prepared, in order that we may protect our freedom.

Can war be prevented ? Yes, I believe it can. But it lies with the ordinary man and woman in the streets of Britain to stop it. It is your responsibility to come forward of your own free will, in order that we may be so prepared, so well organized, so strong, that no other Nation will dare to attack us.

Yet again, if the worst does happen, and a war is forced upon us, with Britain prepared and every man and woman among us trained for some job, however devastating the attack might be, we could hang out for a fortnight.

And if we can do that, we win hands down.

But we must have time. Time to get our Air Force detachments from Egypt, India, Singapore. Time for our great Dominions to rally to us. And time for our great Sister Nation across the Atlantic to send us the help which, knowing that if [4] we go down, she goes down too, we may feel confident that in the last extremity she will surely do.

The war would be irretrievably lost to any Continental nation that could not smash us in a fortnight and every Continental nation knows it.

But it is you and I who will have to bear the brunt of the battle, confident in these immense reserves of power which will unquestionably assure us final victory. And we must be trained for our work during that vital fortnight and organized down to the last detail. That is why it is the imperative duty of every citizen in Britain to-day to enlist in some form of National Service.

No-one is too old, providing they are in good health, to render some service to their Country. Particulars of A.RP. work, Fire-fighting, Nursing services, Women’s Auxiliary Units and scores of other jobs, can be obtained from the local Employment Exchanges, the Free Libraries and the Police Stations.

I do appeal to every one of you who has not yet volunteered to go, without fail, next week and put your name down for the job which you feel most suited to do.

If war does come, it will be swift and terrible. In the Time factor we are up against something that we’ve never had to face before. It is almost certain that the attack would come without any declaration of hostilities. The latest planes can attain a speed of over 500 miles an hour. Such planes could cross the Straits from Calais to Dover in two minutes, 20 seconds. If they came from bases on the far side of the Rhine, we could not expect more than fifteen minutes’ warning. There will be no time to train volunteers then.

Do not be deceived by the present lull in the international situation. There are still innumerable danger spots left in Europe. A Crisis may arise at any time. [5]

Today Britain stands once more as a bulwark of civilisation. If her people fail her and she goes down in panic and revolution during that first terrible fortnight, the light of the world will have gone out.

But her people will not fail her. In all her long history they have never failed her and it lies with you and the other audiences which speakers such as myself are addressing all over Britain to-night, to show once more the true spirit of our ancient and unconquerable Nation.

To show the whole world by coming forward to volunteer in your hundreds that we are determined to preserve that belief in the practice of justice, toleration and freedom for which we have ever stood.