The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1938. BREATHING SPACE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 219, 16 September 1938, Page 8

The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1938. BREATHING SPACE.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, Fof tht future in the distance. And the good that tee can do.

Mr. Chamberlain's talk with Hcrr Hitler hns been followed by an announcement that a further talk or conference has been arranged; meanwhile the Prime Minister is returning to London to consult his colleagues, and possibly Parliament also. It is possible to read a great deal into the announcement, but at the least it indicates that the respective views expressed at Berchtesgaden were not immediately found to be irreconcilable. There is the possibility of a breathing space, of a " cooling off" period, during which the negotiations which have been broken off in Czechoslovakia may be taken up by the principals and pursued with greater success. In addition, as the leaders' discussion, according to the German report, was " open and extensive," there is the hope of Mr. Chamberlain's making progress with that general " appeasement " in Kurope which it is his ambition to bring about during his Premiership. These things are possible, and remain possibfe so long as there is no resort to force; but it would be foolish to suggest that the danger of a resort to force has been far removed.

At the moment of Mr. Chamberlain's arrival at Munich the German radio stations broadcast, not a welcoming and conciliatory statement by HeiY Hitler, or an appeal by him to the Sudeten Germans to cease their dangerous agitation, at least temporarily, during the period of the negotiations at Berchtesgaden, but a " proclamation" by Herr Henlein. He declared that recent events showed the "impossibility of living with the Ceecha," and ended by saying, " We want to go back to the Reich." The broadcasting of this proclamation indicates that Herr Hitler has no intention of lowering the political temperature in Germany; rather, he is willing that it should be raised to boiling point. The German people are to be encouraged not to think, but to feel that their brothers across the border are being outrageously persecuted and wish only for the Reich to take them under its sheltering wing. But this course is impossible; it cannot be followed without the absorption of all Czechoslovakia in the Reich, and to that the Czechs .and Slovaks would never submit. The purpose of German encouragement of Sudeten agitation along these lines can be guessed, and it ill accords with the hopes raised by Mr. Chamberlain's mission of peace.