The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo and The Sun. TUESDAY, JUNE 18, 1940. FRANCE—AND BRITAIN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 143, 18 June 1940, Page 6

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

TUESDAY, JUNE 18, 1940. FRANCE—AND BRITAIN.

For the cause that lacks atsietancc. For the tcrong that reeds resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that use can do.

The purpobe of the change of Government has been, all too soon, made plain: .it was to secure a Government that would seek peace with Germany and could do so with the hope of b£ing granted honourable terms. That the Government which will seek peace should be composed in the main of great soldiers, devoted servants of France, is evidence enough of the plight to which the French armies have been reduced by the Nazi [blitzkrieg. These men would not [think of laying down their arms if they did not know the nature of France's extremity. If they had hope of retrieving the situation of their armies they would be the last to speak of an armistice. Obviously, they had no hope left. It is not for us to utter or to think one word of reproach, for the French people have borne the brunt of this war, and borne it in their own country. They have fought magnificently, and if Marshal Petain now acknowledges defeat and offers himself to France "to lessen her plight"—who knows better than he of the necessity?

Petain has said that be hopes for terms that he can honourably sign— or he will not sign them. Perhaps there was the thought, in the fateful Council of Ministers at Bordeaux, that the Germans, a military people, would treat a soldier more generously than they would treat a politician. Hitler's hatred of French politicians (and of British) being boundless, the thought probably had ground in fact, but we should not harbour any illusions on that subject. Hitler, who raised himself to power, and kept himself in power, partly by continually harping on the injustice of the "dictate" of Versailles, now has the opportunity to make his own "dictate" —and he will use it to the full. His ideas of Germany's necessary "livingspace" will advance by leaps and bounds. And Mussolini —it is his opportunity, too. He will be concerned, first, with tin disposal of the French Navy. If that fleet,can be secured, or even if it should be scuttled, the way will be open for Italy to realise many of her aspirations. But of these matters, of such grave concern to British interests in the Mediterranean—and of immediate concern to Australia and New Zealand, whose sons are in Palestine and Egypt—we must await further information.

It is needless, and indeed most undesirable, to emphasise the magnitude and significance of these events. They speak with their own eloquence, and of human eloquence we have had too much, and are still having too much. To-day we record the utterances of men and of newspapers on the theme that Britain is left alone to fight for the world's liberty. Such phrases as this have ceased to have meaning, if they ever had any. The fact, the understandable fact, the fact upon which British people, given leadership worthy of them, are willing to act, is that Britain, and the British Dominions, are left to fight alone for the British Commonwealth, and for such of the British colonies as can be saved without endangering the whole. Hitler and Mussolini, with such help as they are willing to accept from their satellites, are going to arrange the territorial frontiers and the economic system of Europe to their liking, and there is little, or perhaps nothing, that Britain in the meanwhile can do to prevent them. Those are the facts, and we shall do well to face them. If by saving ourselves we save liberty for the world, and if other nations still long* for the kind of liberty we ourselves cherish, well and good; but our first task is to secure the future of our own existence as ■A Commonwealth.

Of Britain's determination to fight on alone there is no doubt; Mr. Churchill in a few grim words said all that needs to be said on that subject. But as to the purpose of fighting on alone there is room for difference of opinion. The immediate 'purpose, of course, is the preservation | of the United Kingdom; the further [purpose should be to demonstrate to i the dictators of Europe that the British Commonwealth can and will j continue to exist as a separate group 'of nations, which others may join if they wish. The member States of this group have the men and the material resources necessary; they have common institutions, traditions, language; they have the habit of peaceful co-operation. Together, if given leadership which represents them all, they can and will be strong against all other systems, against all enemies. This is the time, above all other times, for the Dominions to express themselves, first to reaffirm their common loyalty to the Crown, secondly to assure the Mother Country thAt all and anything they can do for her protection will be done.