UNEASY REFLECTIONS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 59, Issue 275, 2 September 1939, Page 4

UNEASY REFLECTIONS.

It is a disturbing thought that if Germany had won the last- war and gorged her appetite with as much annexation as she thought she could digest, she might now have been in our position and we in hers, writes “Scrutator’ ’ in the “Sunday Times.” Still under the Kaiser, she would be looking on the world fully satisfied with the distribution of its supposedly good things; a revolutionary England on the other hand would be dissatisfied and be doing everything .possible to reshape it to our advantage. She, in such case, would pose as the champion of a settled peace; wo might now be denounced as aggressors and disturbers of the peace. These reflections point two morals which we shall do well to keep constantly in our minds. The first is that a double dose either of native virtue or original sin that makes nations contented or discontented with things as they are, peaceful, or bellicose, defensive or aggressive, loyal or disloyal to our common civilisation. The second moral is the old one that force is no remedy. The Peace Front that we are trying to form is an ideal instrument of policy if it succeeds in defending the right without war; but if it does not prevent war, then no matter how pure our original intentions or how complete our victory), the settlement at the next peace will bo worse than that of Versailles which is now crumbling to pieces. If that peace was not hard enough to prevent a second great- war, what sort of a peace would be imposed to prevent a third? *