overseas Opinions

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 234, 1 July 1939, Page 1 (Supplement)

overseas Opinions

Unworthy of Grown-up Men. “We should never lose sight of the most momentous filet that this long-sus-‘■■nlned, continuous, spiritual life of the ihurob exists and needs to be taken into account. If our consciences lead us to cut ourselves off from it, we must obey our conscience, but let us be clear about what we are doing: we may be pulling up our roots. What I protest against is the petulant dismissal of the whole of this living tradition as nonsense by people who have never troubled to discover what it really is. The young may be excused/for, thinking, in their intellectual arrogance, that a smartlyexpressed objection can refute a great movement of the spirit, but it is unworthy of grown-up men." —The Dean of St. Paul’s. Undiplomatic Language.

“I am convinced,” writes Herr von Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister, in the Italian newspaper “Popolo d’ltalia,” "that Italy and Germany could not have given a better reply to what the Duce calls those half-baked, degenerate democrats who are always afraid of aggression and see an aggressor in everybody. With regard to the future. I believe that our two peoples can remain calm, There is nothing new in our military alliance; but for those half-baked, pettifogging and carping jurists it is just as well that the T should be dotted, so that they know what our real relations are and also know that their lies-have no further scope. This pact between Germany and Italy was not necessary, but it is just as well that it should have been concluded. Today, and tomorrow we are united. We have the same destiny. Let the democracies know that Mussolini and Hitler and their two peoples want peace, but if they will not leave us in peace let the democracies remember that Mussolini and Hitler, with their two peoples, will be invincible.’ A Defiance of Aggression.

"I can assure you that my country will never challenge any, of its neighbours. We’are not going to give offence to anybody, but we are going to play our historic role by keeping the equilibrium between nations. If there is a chance of peace, peace will be maintained. The difficulties are great and the danger is very real. In remaining open for any compromise or any arrangement which would be two-sided and pacific in its intentions Poland is absolutely determined to refuse any solution which would be either imposed unilaterally or would run counter to the honour of the nation. We do not ■want to be boastful or to drag you into any new danger. On the contrary, we consider it most important to be a trustworthy partnep whose policy will be clear to you and- who will inspire you with the confidence without which there is no stable relationship between nations.”—Count - Raczynski, Polish Ambassador to Great Britain, in a speech at Manchester.

Call for Calm and Reason. “With calm and reason on both sides,’’ says “The Times," “the question ’ of Danzig is essentially one which is capable of solution by negotiation. But it would be impossible to prevent a general, conflagration from following the outbreak of a war between Poland and Germany. There is an uneasy feeling in Poland —amounting indeed almost to a conviction—that, once Germany were definitely installed in Danzig, she would use her position there to exercise economic and political pressure. It would be so easy to fortify the place and,dominate the neighbouring harbour of Gdynia which Poland has built for herself on Polish soil. And a.fortified Danzig, together with the newly acquired port of Memel, would go a long way toward, making Germany supreme in the Baltic. Without any doubt the sympathies and the interests of the smaller Baltic States are united with those of the Polish people in their determination to maintain an international status for the Free City.”—"The Times’’ (London). . Tiie Shadow Over Danzig. .‘/The report that Germany may suggest a plebiscite in Danzig,” comments the “Glasgow Herald,” “would allow the people of the Free City to vote for ‘a return to the Reich,’ may well be received with a wry smile in Poland — and elsewhere. A. plebiscite in Danzig vould, of course, produce a large majority for any policy which the Nazis wished; to follow, and it would do-this precisely because, in her anxiety to maintain friendship with the Reich, Poland has allowed all opposition to the Nazi Party in Danzig to be crushed,, and has, indeed, tended to restrain the league of Nations itself when. Geneva showed some'faint tendency to uphold tlte democratic constitution given to the Free City 20 years ago. From one point of view, of course, this fact adds immensely to the strength of the case •which Colonel Beck made in his speech on Friday. In a Nazi sense Danzig is already ‘absolutely free’ —it is absolutely Nazi. No doubt some adjustments could be made which would bring its people still closer to the Reich theit foreign interests, for example, might Ve put under the care of German rather than of Polish consuls. But so far as Danzig itself is concerned annexation could produce only two real changes—it s fortificaition and its commercial ruin.” •

In Defence of the Aborigines. “The hundredth birthday w'as cele-. brated last week of a society that has deeply earned the gratjtude of the primitive subject peoples of 'the world. The Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society lives to carry on and expand the work of Wilberforce and Thomas Fowell Buxton, to ensure that the British nation, which has an unexampled responsibility for native races shall be true to the spirit of emancipation and all it implies, and to secure by international agreement a future of freedom for the primitive peoples who come under other Powers. Its greatest triumph in this century,” savs the “Manchester Guardian,” “was tire passage in 1926 of an International Convention by which forty-two Powers are pledged to ‘abolish slavery in all its forms.’ But its work is never-end-ing The rapid industrialization of Africa which we are witnessing in our time puts on it the burden of urging that neither child nor adult labour shall be exploited in the course of that progress. The growing demands of colonial territories for such measure of self-government as will enable them to fram”e their own native policies keep it active in resisting proposals that would jeopardize for all time the status of the natives.”

Sleep. “There are sometimes particular reasons for sleeplessness. ' One famous speaker said that, when he had a gr cl 't speech to make, he lost two nights sleep, one in thinking what he ought to say, the other in thinking.what he ought to have said. But more serious and more prolonged is the sleeplessness which is due to some remembered wrong or slight. Then you go oyer the miserable business again and again. You recall the words spoken or written, and you make the most scathing and crushing rejoinder, by which the enemy will be silenced forever. Yet the whole thing comes back again and the same dialectic is repeated, and there is <no end to it. When this is our lot, thbre is little that can be done by the physician; something is needed to break .the fatal, chain. It is not enough to say, ‘I don’t care about the business. It is much , more to the point to face it out and to forgive.: Sleep takes up about a third of our years. When you are sixty you have probably spent twenty years in sleep. It,is a very serious division of our life, and it is not a trifling thing, is it, to learn how to sleep, and on occasion, how to turn even sleeplessness to glorious gain, ’ “Quintus Quiz” in the “Christian Century.” In Search of Order.

■t‘We must contrive, somehow; while accepting economic’ nationalism as an inevitable condition, so to modify or expand it as to overcome the difficulties which its unregulated and unbalanced development has created. The simplest and most obvious way -to do. that is to deal with the problem, not on a world scale, but, on more practical and limited lines, by : encouraging the coming together, for the purpose of mutual economic co-operation, of groups of nations, constituting; between them a sufficient market and source of supply to meet the main needs of each member, of the group. Such a-group is already in existence in the shape of the 1 British Commonwealth and Empire, and has found its natural economic expression ih the system of mutual co-operation initiated at the Ottawa Conference of 1932. 'Within that system a number of countries whose products are essentially complementary ' afford to each other by means of economic preferences, a reasonable assurance of markers and sources of supply. The system is not exclusive, and recognizes the several interests of its members in developing their trade relations with outside countries.” —Mr. L. S. Amery, formerly British Secretary of State for the Dominions. , French Diplomacy.

“Germany has made giant strides towards hegemony,” writes Mr. Sisley Huddleston in the "Contemporary Review.” “The problem, the only problem that' matters, is seen in France, as I trust elsewhere,i to 'be the problem of setting bounds to Germany’s ambitions. With' the. goodwill of Italy—if it can still be obtained—it is possible to counteract whatever is illegitimate and aggressive in Germany s Central and Eastern European policy; for with Italy we are assured of Yugoslavia, Hungary, Poland and Rumania so far as she is still economically free. 1 The strength of such a combination lies in the fact that it need not be unfriendly to Germany, and would co-operate with Germany as, let us hope, with. France and' England, for the; consolidation of a peaceful and prosperous Europe. I would not imply that 'there is anything like unanimity in French diplomatic ■thought, but I believe that it is on these lines that most people with diplomatic knowledge, and who are free from diplomatic ‘ideology,’ are now thinking. They start, as they must start, with the postulate th?t everything must 'be subordinated to the necessity of setting bounds to Germany's ambitions.” Fear of War May Cause It.

One psychological factor of great importance is the fear and hatred of war which is spreading through all nations. In Itself that is clearly a good thing, and yet it may introduce difficulties. On the one hand it may hinder any building up of defensive armaments for the purpose of collective security and the protection of threatened territory, and, on the other hand, by a curious psychological mechanism, it may evoke a widespread panic, and when panic rushes into arms it can be even more terrible in its effects than calculated aggressiveness. In other Words, through the very fear and hatred of war such a calamity may be precipitated, just as a person in his overanxiety to keep his head while walking along the edge of a precipice may be seized with panic, and by a kind of compulsive force within him be hurled to his doom. Undoubtedly at the present time peace can be preserved, but the power at the disposal of governments must be organized within a system of international law, just in the same way as the tremendous .power of electricity behind the grid system has had to be controlled and channelled and brbught Into relation with the 'requirements of public supply, otherwise there would be short-circuiting and destruction. — Dr. Wm. Brown, in “War and Peace.’’ President and Critic. “On the very day on which President Roosevelt sent his message to Berlin and Rome, he made a speech to the Pan-American. Union which was devoted to insistence on America’s stake in affairs ‘wider than the defence of our sea-ringed continent,’ and defiance of the dictators. . . His spectacular dispatch of the American navy to the Pacific simultaneously with the dispatch of his message to Berlin and Rome was undoubtedly designed as a warning of America’s readiness to protect the Southern Pacific—particularly Singapore and the Dutch East Indies —against Japanese action in case of British naval concentration elsewhere. Such words, accompanied by such action, make much of the so-called neutrality discussion, now going on in Congress, seem remote and academic. They indicate that the President has already carried the nation far past the point of any possible neutrality, for in the case of an international crisis, Congress can hardly repudiate the Presi-dent,-as he well knows. But they militate against the moral authority of his approach to the axis Powers, for they make that approach the work of a partisan rather than of flic impartial, and ‘friendly intermediary’ which, in his message, the President claims to be.-—The “Christian Century,” U.S.A.