The Main Tasks Facing Britain

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 29, 3 February 1945, Page 4

The Main Tasks Facing Britain

By COL. WALTER ELLIOT The present British Parliament, elected two reigns ago—in the days of George V. and the present British Government, which has seen Britain through some of the most hazardous days in her whole existence, alike are showning signs of wear. A new instrument of government must be built. The present Government's aims were defined by Mr. Churchill, the day he met Parliament when it was formed. "You ask what are our aims?" he exclaimed, "they are—to wage war!" Such was its motto, sucn was its charter of existence. Now no one can say that the only purpose of a Government of Great Britain shall be to wage war. To choose a new Parliament—to make a new Government, will be a preoccupation in Great Britain, just as it was in Australia, and in the United States. What will it have to do? Social Adjustment It will have to carry on, with intensified energy, the process of social adjustment—who is to own the machines, who is to run the machines, what are the proportions in which the yield of the machines is to be distributed. This is the main home task of any instrument of Government in our Western civilisation. In so far as any nation solves that problem it is stable, it is solid, it can fight together in war and pull together in peace. Next, the new Government will have to frame and operate a policy in Europe. That boils down to the two words "Germany" and "Poland." You may say, "Haven't you left out France?" But France, for good or ill, will very largely run herself. France is France. When she is ready to talk, we will talk.

"have you forgotten, then, the prospect of a link-up with the smaller countries of the Continent— Norway, Sweden, Holland, Belgium —a closer ring within a wider League of Nations?" Not at all. But what such a link-up means, and all that it means, is bound up in the one word "Germany." If Germany survives as we have known her— vindictive, furious, equipped either openly or secretly—then all we have acquired is a land frontier in Europe; and that is an object which no Foreign Secretary "in this country sets out to secure. The Focus Has Moved Germany, Germany, Germany. The focus has moved away from London for that word. Has moved away to Washington. Has moved away to Moscow. A policy for Germany. That is the task of the new Government. There is no sign of it in the old. It is all the more important since one of the words about Germany is Moscow, and that is also the first word which comes up over the other problem, Poland. Take three facts about Poland. It was Poland that five years ago first understood Germany. It was Polish soldiers last year who rafted the Khine to bring support to our men at Arnhem. It was to Polish insurgents, fighting for the third time in tnis war in their burning houses, that British aircraft carried arms and help from far-away Italy. Poland is in Europe; and no European policy can be operated, scarcely even framed, until we know what that word signifies.

Lastly, the new Government will have to carry through the war with Japan, as to which tnere is no doubt, and then to frame a colonial policy capable of withstanding the new shocks and stresses which are developing in the world-ocean of the Pacific.