BRITAIN'S LEADERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 150, 27 June 1934, Page 7

BRITAIN'S LEADERS.

ETHELREDS THE UNREADY.

LONDON, June 21. Britain is a nation of Ethelreds the Unready, writes Lord Rothermere in the "Daily Mail." If the politicians looked up Ethelred's biography, he says, they would find a portrait of themselves. The Saxon King is described as "good looking, of graceful manners, and by no means deficient in ability, but with no principles of action, and guided by motives of temporary expediency. Impartial observers," says Lord Rothermere, "cannot deny that the defects by which he betrayed England to the Normans in 1066 are again manifest. Our unreadiness in 1914 cost hundreds of thousands of lives and thousands of millions of pounds which might have been spared. "No nation in history ever paid so dearly, and yet we failed to learn the lesson, for we still are unready on the eve of what may be another Armageddon. Unless immediate action is taken to confront the ominous situation we shall have to redeem our unreadiness at a frightful cost. Britain has been dreaming of disarmament while surrounded by rumblings of approaching war and the clang of restless rearmament." French politicians, he declares, were clamouring for disarmament in order "to set an example to the world" in 1867, on the eve of the Franco-Prussian war. The Government must provide without delay, and at no matter what cost, an air force equal to the strongest in Europe, which is the minimum t(< ensure safety.