HEAVILY DEFEATED.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 49, 7 December 1940, Page 5

HEAVILY DEFEATED.

SUGGESTION FOR PEACE TERMS.

LONDON, December 5

An amendment to the King’s Speech tabled by the Independent Labour Party in the House of Commons regretting that “the Government had failed to set forth the terms upon wliicli peace might be made,” and suggesting the calling of a conference by means of which “the war might be brought to ail early conclusion,” was defeated by 341 votes to 4.

Mr J. McGovern, in moving the amendment, said that a growing number of British people believed that the conflict should be ended and could be ended if reason were allowed to supersede brute force. If Herr Hitler made a speech in the Reichstag, Mr Churchill should make a reasoned reply in the House of Commons plying Herr Hitler with questions as to what kind of a world he envisaged after the war and what he intended to do in certain countries to-day under Nazi domination.

In seconding the amendment, Mr Campbell Stephen said that the Independent Labour. Party, just as members of other parties, dreaded the possibility of a German victory. The time had come when Britain should make a great moral gesture to the world and offer peace to the other side on the basis of justice for all people and thus give hope to the great mass of workers in every country.

The first speaker to oppose the amendment, was Mr James Griffiths (Labour), who, citing as an example Marshal Petain’s actions, said that the question before Britain was not peace or war but capitulation or survival. Sir Percy Harris (Liberal) also opposed the amendment and Mr James Walker (Labour) said that if the amendment had been put before the National Labour Conference it would have been overwhelmingly defeated. Winding up the debate jji favour of the amendment, Mr James Maxton said that the majority of people in the world desired peace. The Lord Privy Seal Mr C. It. Attlee) asked those supporting the amendment whether they favoured peace at any price or whether they believed in liberty and social justice. If Herr Hitler refused t<f listen to what he called the point of reason and rejected a plea for liberty and social justice put forward by the supporters of the amendment, would they fight or give way? Mr Attlee added that he had great respect for those who held absolute pacifist views, and he spoke of the work done by Mr George Lansbury. “Tliere: is no one in the House who is not impressed by the horror of this war or the sight of mangled bodies and broken homes, but there is something worse than the killing of the body, and that is killing the soul.”

The Lord Privy ‘Seal referred to the great tragedy of a great, talented race whose young men had been trained to go back to barbarism “A great many of the German people have been corrupted by this abominable dictatorship,” he said. “Hitler has this grip on Europe and his people, and it is not going to be loosened by a few nice words from the supporters of this amendment.”

The ideals for which Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini stood were not those of highly-civilised human beings. The great difficulty confronting the Government was that Britain was up against people who would not accept the beginning of the foundations of the decencies of modern civilisation. The House must realise that the present war was a contest between two> different conceptions of how affairs should be carried out. The Fascists and Nazis had destroyed every vestige of freedom in Europe. The British aim was to try to establish a world peace of free people —a peace such as civilised people understood. What Britain was asking for herself she was asking for other nations. It was not an occasion when the Government should be expected to give a detailed exposition of its war aims.

Mr Attlee concluded: “The King, in his speech, said: ‘We are resolved to continue the fight until liberty and social justice are secured.’ There is no order, authority, or social justice on the Continent of Europe to-day. Britain has got to replace anarchy in the world by an ordered peace, and she must base an ordered peace on social justice.”—British Official Wireless.