The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 26, 1939. WAR AND PEACE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 304, 26 December 1939, Page 6

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

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 26, 1939. WAR AND PEACE.

For the cause that lacks nssistanec, For the wrong that verds resistance, For the future in lhe distance. And the good that ice can do.

From three separate quarters, His Holiness the Pope, Signer Mussolini and the President of the United State?, have come direct and indirect suggestions that peace might be considered now, before the full holocaust of war is unleashed, when the spring in Europe makes possible a war of movement. When the time for consideration of terms comes these three will almost inevitably open up the road to the conference half, and their continuing efforts will gradually awaken the people of the aggressor nations to a realisation of the suffering which their leaders' mad desire for world domination has imposed upon their own subjects as well as the nations whose right of existence they have so wantonly attacked. The response from both Russia and Germany is what might have been expected. Stalin's forces have intensified their bombardment of open cities in Finland, while Hess, the alter ego of Hitler, in a Christmas message in which hate was, as is usual, the chief ingredient, declared that only when victory was secure could Germany talk of peace.

I That statement is consistent with | Germany's attitude ever since the rise lot' Nazi-ism; it is another way of declaring that only when Germany completely dominates and overshadows not only the neighbours she has already crushed, but freedom and civilisation also, will her insatiable demands cease. Her peace aims have never been stated; they will not be until defeat brings her face to face with realities, and only after a military overthrow will she assent to terms which will give the nations, great and small, the opportunity to develop their, nationhood on lines which seem best to themselves, and not as slave States dependent on the will of a self-elected State-god. In a dozen places in Mein Kampf Hitler rages and raves against the injustices of the Versailles Treaty; he has never made a speech since without forcing them down the throats of his audiences. But the lot of the Russians in 1918 indicates the terms which would have been imposed on the Allies had Germany won and forecast her present determination if ever she has the opportunity of dictating peace terms again. Russia lost a third of her population, over a third of her railways, more than half her agriculture, three-quarters of her iron and nine-tenths of her coal.

Similarly, in the treaty of Bucharsst Rumania was compelled to cede the Dobvudja province. Gold, manganese and coal mines were seized, and terms imposed in the oilfields which made the whole State a vassal of Germany. By comparison with these terms the Versailles conditions were lenient indeed, but by continually shouting their injustices Hitler has led his people, nnd others outside German frontiers, too, to believe that a magnanimous nation which was prepared to give all its enemies fair treatment in defeat was stamped underfoot by a ruthless conqueror. That there were faults in the treaty is not denied, but in admitting these sight must not be lost of their terrible alternatives had Germany won. Junker or Nazi, the national outlook is unaltered, and that is why the peoples to whom liberty means life itself will not bow the head in meek submission to a tyranny which would cast every other nation in its own mould and would deny every vestige of freedom to its subject races.