WAR SCARES

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21991, 15 January 1937, Page 8

WAR SCARES

TO THE EDITOR' Of THE PRESS. Sir,—This letter or protest has been evoked by the reading of a cable message headed "Another World War Approaching—Lord Rothermere's Conviction." If that is not scaremongering on Lord Rothermere's part, what is it? And as if to make the scare more dangerous still, Lord Rothermere's panic article on the subject appears in

the Japanese press. British people know Lord Rothermere, and the intelligent among them are not likely to be misled by him. It is different with the Japanese, who may quite conceivably think he is speaking for the British Empire; and that way great danger lies. If there is any greater provocation to war and the cultivation of the war mentality than this assiduous preaching of imminent war, this engendering of distrust and suspicion between the powers of the world, I would like to know what it is. It is all the more humiliating to the thoughtful man that such dangerous scares can be started and propagated by men like Lord Rothermere, who, without a glimmer of statesmanlike vision or genius, poses as an authority simply because he has been successful and has amassed millions by the production and sale of cheap newspapers and periodicals. By such scares the world—or the timid part of it—has been kept on the tenterhooks of painful suspense for 18 years. How many war scares have we had in that time? But the universal war lias not yet come, and is not likely to come within any appreciable period. Is it not time a halt were called in this dangerous gospelling? If there is one thing which threatens the world peace more than another, it is this ceaseless war-like talk, and the rattling of the sabres.—Yours, etc.. VERITAS, l January 14, 1937.