The Press

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24368, 21 September 1944, Page 4

The Press

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1944.

External Affairs In one sense it is unfortunate that the Opposition attack on the Estimates for the Department of External Affairs should have developed, specifically, against the appointment of Mr Boswell to Moscow and of Mr Barclay to Canberra. The discussion of such issues is not easily prevented from degenerating into an exchange of personal opinions about Tom, Dick, and Harry. Opposition speakers say Mr Boswell- is, not worth his salary; the Prime Minister says he is a man of ability, culture, and international outlook and knowledge. Opposition speakers question Mr Barclay’s qualifications for his post; the Prime Minister says it is impossible to doubt them, farmers have a high opinion of him, and he is “ capable and tactful It is a point of merely ludicrous importance that Mr Fraser’s tribute to Mr Barclay is such as any good domestic servant might deserve; to Mr Boswell, such as every school teacher aspires to and many earn. It is a point of 'more serious importance that even if Mr Boswell . and tactful Mr Barclay are correctly described' by Mr Fraser, who knows them well and took the responsibility of recommending their appointments, still the descriptions fall very far short of what is required, and ought to be demonstrable, of men appointed to diplomatic posts abroad,- But discussion conducted along these lines can lead nowhere but to flat contradictions. The Government might have been more profitably asked a rather different question, which genuinely justifies some concentration on Mr Boswell and Mr Barclay. Can it be convincingly suggested that, when two oversea posts have to be filled, two defeated candidates of the Government’s party at the General Election are at once obviously revealed as the most suitable persons in the country to fill them? Such a coincidence is not impossible, but very unlikely; and a detached study of the political record of both persons does not favour the theory that precisely this fortunate coincidence did occur. But the alternative to fantastic coincidence is that Mr Barclay and Mr Boswell were chosen, not as the best qualified men to be found in the country, without regard for party affiliation, service, and desert, but as men whom it was politically desirable to appoint and for whose appointment some sort of a case could be made out. And the alternative is one in which, clearly, the national interest comes second instead of first. Another question is prompted by the appointment of Mr Barclay and Mr Boswell, and it should have been asked in the debate. If the qualifications of ministers to serve abroad ought to be the highest possible, so should those of the permanent staff of the External Affairs Department, serving both at home and abroad. What has the Government done to recruit and train suitable staff for the department? The British Government has devoted extraordinary pains to this matter, in the midst of war. The Australian Government has instituted a special scheme of recruitment and training. The New Zealand Government appears to have done nothing but reserve the External Affairs Department from the Public Service Commissioner’s control, in order to have a free hand ,in making appointments. This is not the right way, it is a bad and dangerous way, to go about the primary business of staffing the department for its work. The Opposition should challenge it. After the West Wall According to a British Official Wireless message printed yesterday, plans for governing those parts of Germany brought under the control of the western Allies have, on the authority of General Eisenhower, been broadcast to the people of western and southern Germany. The immediate task of the Allied Military Government General Eisenhower will set up will be “ to secure “the communications of the Allied “armies and to suppress any activities in occupied areas which could “hinder the speedy conclusion of “the war”. One of the eventualities covered by this announcement is that German resistance will not end with the breaching of the West Wall. The Rhine, of course, is a formidable barrier in rear of it; and resistance might still be organised upon it by a High Command well aware that resistance must be futile. A contributor to the “Round Table” has said that the crucial fact of all modern German wars is “the overwhelming deter- “ mination to ensure that the “ Fatherland shall not be the scene “of the fighting”. When Goering assured the German people that not a single enemy bomb would fall on Germany, he was expressing “ not “merely a boast but an article of “ German faith ”, Under bombing the German people have long since come to regard the war as a vast horror. Facing a flood of invasion through the breaching of the West Wall, it might be thought that the German people would be sure to break at once. If they did, the German General Staff would be helpless to do anything but surrender as the Allies demand. Yet, to all the calamities of the last year and mor < ~, the reaction of the mass of the German people has been one of passive acceptance. “ Inevitably ”, wrote the “ Economist ” after • the Allies had secured their foothold in France, “ the question has been “raised whether Germany will not “ now follow in Italy’s footsteps and “ end a hopeless war with an appeal “for an armistice. The analogy is “false. ... In Italy there were “ rallying points for resistance to the “regime. In Germany there are, of I “ course, bankers and industrialists l“and churchmen; but they are not

“part of well-integrated and selfconfident social groups. They are “atomised and impotent. Even the “Wehrmacht . . . could not, like “ Badoglio, overthrow the regime to “seek an unconditional surrender”. Furthermore, as was stated when it was announced that the Allies would deal with no person or body of per-, sons in Germany except bn the basis of unconditional surrender by the German General Staff* “The “ Allied Governments realise .. that “this unequivocal and uncompro* “mising demand for unconditional “surrender will induce Goebbels to “ try to stiffen the Germans in the “ last phase of the fight ”, He may have succeeded. Last week the United States Office of War Information said, on' the authority of the War and Navy Departments, that no general surrender of the German armies is expected. They may gradually disintegrate and surrender piecemeal; and the war with Germany will be finally over' when all Germany has been occupied, town by town, V-day may therefore, in the opinion of these authorities, be spread • gradually “over days and weeks”. .In these last words is the fullest measure of Goebbels’s success. They measure failure.