The Wilmington morning star., 1941-02-10
CHURCHILL PROMISES
VICTORY WITHOUT AID
OF AMERICAN FORCE
Continued From Page One)

Continued From Page One)
is the acquiescence of the Bull
garian government. Airfields are
being occupied by German ground
personnel numbering thousands, SO
far. as to enable the German air
force to come into action from
Bulgaria.
Preparations Made
'Many preparations have been
made for the movement Of Ger
man troops into or through Bull
garia. And perhaps this southwark
has already begun. dn
the copy as prepared for delivery
the text read land this southwark
movement has already begun.")
If all the Balkan people, aided
by Britain and Turkey, stood to-
gether, he declared, sit would be
many months before a German
army and airforce of sufficient
strength to overcome them could
be assembled in the southeast of
Europe ..
''And in those MONTHS he add
ed grinly, much might happen.
Much will certainly happen as
American aid becomes effective,
as our air power grows, as we
become a well-armed nation, and
as our armies in the East increase
in strength"
Churchill spoke of Hitler as that
wicked man whose erime-stained
regime and system are at bay
and in the tolls" but he saved his
contempt for Mussolini whom he
called "the crafty, cold-blooded,
black hearted Italian, who had
thought to gain an empire on the
cheap by stabbing fallen France
in the back"
The Italian defeats in Libya, he
remarked with icy sarcasm, are
''only part of the story"
'They are only part Of the story
Of the decline and fall of the Italian
empire. That will not take a fu-
ture Gibbon so long to write as
the original work"
edward Gibbon, to whom he re-
ferred, started writing THE De-
cline and Fall of the Roman En-
pre- about October, 1772, n d
finished it on a June night nearly
IS years later-in 1872
The prime minister observed
that while the African victories
were ''the beginnings of a process
Of reparation and of the chastise-
ment of wrongdoings," mighty
tide of sympathy and Of Ameri-
can aid has begun to cross the
Atlantic. - :
e Speaks of Genoa
He spoke of the British naval
shelling of Genoa at dawn today,
describing the port as one from
(which perhaps a Nazi expedition
might soon have sailed to attack
General Weygand in Algeria or
Tunis."
ut is right" he said, ''that the
italian people should be made to
feel the sorry plight into which
they have been dragged by Die
tator Mussolini, and if the can
nonade of Genoa, rolling along the
coast, reverberating in the noun
tains, has reached the ears of our
French comrades in their grief
and misery, it may cheer them
with the feeling that friends, ac-
tive friends, are near and that
Britannia rules the waves"
He asserted the Italians, aided
by strong reinforcements of the
German luftwaffe, had failed to
dominate the air over the central
Mediterranean.
II daresay you will have noticed
very significant air action which
was fought over Malta a fortnight
ago." the prime minister S a d.
THE Germans sent an entir e
geschwader (squadronj Of dive
bombers to Sicily. They seriously
injured our new aircraft carrier
Illustrious, and then as this wound
ed ship was sheltering in Malta
harbor they concentrated upon her
all their force so as to beat her
to pieces"
''But they were met by the bat
teries of Malta i. -" he con-
tinued. 'They were met by the
fleet air arm and by the Royal
Air force and in two or three days
they had lost, out of $50 dive bomb
ers, upwards of 90-fifty Of which
were destroyed in the air and 40
on the ground. :. The German
geschwader accepted the defeat.
They would not come any more" I"
The prime minister declared
the greatest issue" still was the
threat OF an attempt to invade
England in the near future.
Therefore, I drop one word of
caution: A Nazi invasion of Great
Britain last autumn would have