The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 1939. CONVINCING GERMANY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 151, 29 June 1939, Page 10

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

THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 1939. CONVINCING GERMANY.

For the cause that lacks assistance. For the wrong that reeds resistance. For the future in the distance, And the good that ice can do.

Gloomy prophecies of international woe are easy to come upon in these years. The effect el them when often repeated, as they have been, i~ to produce a spirit of fatalism, relieved only hv the thought that prophets have been wrong in the past mid may he wrong again. Nevertheless, serious attention must be given to the statement made on Tuesday by M. Daladier, both because of the position he holds and because he has seldom talked in the .-aine way in the past. He i- in a position to know the facts. .Mr. Churchill, who endorses t lie French Prime Minister's view, is also exceptionally well informed, and because of his unofficial position he is able to speak more freely than M. Daladier. But, though they have spoken with different degrees of precision, they have said the same thing. M. Daladier U convinced that "we are to be faced this -mniner with a choice between peaceful collaboration between peoples, or domination by some of them. .. . France will raise all her forces against possible ventures toward domination. ..." Mr. Churchill bluntly declares that the Nazis, if they fail to intimidate Poland, Avill attack her, and if they do Britain and France will be "forced to declare war." It is impossible to believe that either speech would have been made without full knowledge of Germany's apparent intentions. Germany, however, will not provoke a war until her leaders are convinced that they cannot gain their ends by bluff and intimidation. They may not, even then, provoke it. Whether they do or not will depend in large measure on their leaders' estimates of their chances of success, and one obvious purpose of both M. Daladier and Mr. Churchill (and of Mr. Chamberlain at Cardiff last week) is to convince the German leaders that this time their opponents are wide-eyed and ready for them. The facts of British and French rearmament are of course well known in Berlin, but arms are only the instruments of policy. Whether they are to be used, and in what circumstances, depends finally on the determination of a few men sitting in a Cabinet room. Is the policy firm? If the German leaders believe it is not they will conceive that in bringing pressure on Poland (assuming that Danzig not Rumania is the real objective) they will not run into real danger. It is, unfortunately, not impossible that the German leaders think that they can succeed even if the Reich had to meet the armed forces of Britain and France, but it is unlikely that they would take the risk. But if they wrongly believed that Britain and France would at the last moment " back down," they would plunge Europe into war as certainly as if they intended it. Hence the importance of making it clear, in such a way as to leave no possible room for doubt, that Britain and France mean what they say.