THE FINANCIAL SIDE OF FOREIGN POLITICS

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22343, 5 March 1938, Page 24

THE FINANCIAL SIDE OF FOREIGN POLITICS

ro THIS EDITOR OF I'HB PBBBB. Sir, —In one particular especially it is to be regretted that public discussion upon the topic of European politics has been allowed to rest so heavily upon presumably disinterested ethical considerations. Abyssinia, Spain, and now China have come to be viewed by the mass in the light of battlefields to provide vindication of I British honour. Personally, I hold this view of things to be too narrowly national and restricted. In more ways than one it has done incalculable damage to the calm judgment the situation requires. It is of itself responsible for a morbid acceptance of the theory that "war is inevitable" and therefore unavoidable. It has given a very much needed fillip to the militarists' insistence upon the use of force: and,

feared, lulled the public conscience to a self-righteous hope of absolution from the consequences of war. Leaving aside all questions of our title to judge upon the moral delinquencies of others, is this the whole story? Are we ourselves free from implication, in the forming of those surroundings which have fertilised the growths of destructive suspicions, hates, and fears such as are now prevalent in Europe? Even there our defences cannot stand complete. Have we done our utmost to uproot these noxious weeds from our immediate earth? —Yours, etc., F. W. HEAL. March 3, 1938.