THE HOUR OF TEMPTATION

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22877, 25 November 1939, Page 12

THE HOUR OF TEMPTATION

The Task of the Peace

Settlement LIBERAL VIEW OF WAR AIMS [By the RT. HON. SIR ARCHIBALD SINCLAIR. M.P., Leader of the Liberal Party.] It was said of Napoleon 111 that he was so deceitful that you could never be quite sure that what he said was the exact opposite of the truth. Nobody has any excuse for such uncertainty about the declarations of Herr Hitler, •Dr. Goebbels, or. Herr von Ribbehtrop. They lie bluntly and crudely. If Herr Hitler says, as he frequently does, that he has no more territorial ambitions, everybody knows that he is carefully laying his plans for his next conquest. If Dr. Goebbels says that Mr Churchill has sunk the Athenia it would never occur to Mr Churchill or to anybody else to bother about issuing a denial. As for Herr von Ribbentrop, in August he was telling his own Fuehrer that Great Britain would never fight unless she was directly attacked, and now at Danzig he declares that Mr Chamberlain has been plotting this war against Germany for years

Now, I am an opponent of Mr Chamberlain. I loathe war myself, but I know that my own hatred of it is not greater than Mr Chamberlain’s. In the interests of peace he carried compromise with Nazi Germany to the point of sacrificing the Czechs and alienating the Russians at Munich. The real criticism of Mr Chamberlain is not that he prepared for a war which he forced upon Germany, such a charge is obviously and ludicrously untrue; the real criticism of Mr Chamberlain and of the British Government, of which, since 1937, he has been Prime Minister, and since 1931 one of the most powerful members, is that they did not start soon enough to prepare resistance to the Nazi conspiracy against peace and order of Europe; and that they did not realise that the only hope of averting war without surrender was to reinforce and vindicate the authority of the League of Nations.

' The Post-War Failure That is where the governments of the world went wrong after the last war. To the passionate faith of the German Nazis in the destiny of their country and in the guidance of their Fuehrer, the old men with pre-war minds who governed Britain and France were unable to oppose an equal and steadfast faith in the principles of the Covenant. So they began to compromise with evil and the League of Nations began to crumble. Instead of insisting on their own principles, instead of rallying to the support of the League the overwhelming power of the law-abiding nations, instead of contributing, each nation according to its strength, wealth and responsibilities, to the construction of a system of collective security as a buttress of peace and freedom, and instead of using the machinery of the League to remedy genuine national grievances, they began to appease aggression, with the result that every concession only whetted the aggressor’s appetite, increased his self-assurance and his contempt for the League of Nations, and encouraged him to the invention of fresh grievances.

Lessons of Experience. We must learn from this lamentable experience three lessons: — First, that, however long the war and however great the provocation which the Allies may receive from the enemy, the victors must not attempt to impose their dispensation upon Europe and the world without consultation with the neutral and vanquished, nations. A political constitution which is not based upon consent is a standing Incitement to the discontented to use force to overthrow it.- Therefore, if we want to establish peace, we must obtain for the new dispensation the widest possible measure of consent. Second, we must agree to such limitations of national sovereignty as will leave in the hands of the next international organisation effective power to assert its authority and that of its organs of justice, and to provide for peaceful change. . / ... Third, that we must all of us, private citizens in the nations who are members of the new League or Federation, look upon it as our property, the guardian of our liberties, the protector of our homes from war.

Rights of the Individual So I agree with Mr H. G. Wells who, !n a recent letter to “The Times,” deprecates a detailed discussion of “war aims” at this stage of the war, and has endeavoured to answer the question: “What are we fighting for?” by drafting a revised version of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. We are fighting, I believe, to assert the principle that the State exists to serve the individual, and that the individual, guided by his conscience, has a higher loyalty to the State; and just as the individual is entitled to look to the State to protect him from private violence, compulsion, and intimadation at home, and to create the conditions in which he can earn a livelihood for himself and his family, so he must be ablekto look to the new international organisation to protect him from the violence, compulsion, and intimidation of an aggressor; and to create those economic conditions which will enable man to use the abundance with which science has for the first time in the world’s history provided him, for the enrichment of our civilisation and for the happiness and prosperity of our peoples.

Temptation These are the objects for which the statesmen of the world must work at the Peace Conference. The pursuit of national or imperial aims, an attempt to wreak vengeance for brutal actions in the war, or the deliberate humiliation or impoverishment of the vanquished nation would bring woe to us and to our children and to our children’s children. Let us steel our hearts and minds now bv prayer and thought to the resolve that we will at - the Peace Conference pursue freedom, justice, prosperity, and peace for all men—for Germans, Czechs, and Poles as much as for Frenchmen or Englishmen or Scotsmen. . _ Now is the time to make up our minds, the Pop© was right when he said that the hour of victory will be the hour of temptation. (World copyright, 1939, by CO-OPERATION. Reproduction in whole or part strictly forbidden.)