HALT AGGRESSION

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 234, 1 July 1939, Page 11

HALT AGGRESSION

Britain’s Determination

Bluntly Stated

AXIS POLICY DENOUNCED • Lord Halifax Criticizes SelfIsolation Of Germany (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, June 29. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, delivered before the Royal Institute of International Affairs an important speech in which, as well as declaring the immediate purposes of British policy in vigorous and unmistakable terms, he entered into a detailed discussion of a number of problems fundamental 'to reconstruction of international order, including those issues of living space and expansion which are today raised as challenges by the totalitarian States. The British policy, Lord Halifax made clear, rests ’on twin foundations of purpose. One is the determination to resist force, and the other is recognition of the world’s desire to get on with the constructive work of building peace. But today, he said, the threat of military force is holding the world to ransom and therefore he insisted that the immediate task for Britain was to resist aggression. Only in a different atmosphere and if convinced that all nations really wanted peaceful solutions would it be possible to enter upon discussion of matters to which so much\ of his own speech was devoted.

What was now fully and universally accepted in Britain, but might not even yet be as well understood elsewhere, was that in the event of further aggression the British were resolved to use at once • the whole of their strength in fulfilment of their pledges to resist it. To that Lord Halifax returned more than once.

The address was heard with great attention by the distinguished company of men and women—many of them experts on one or other of the aspects of international affairs that he touched upon. The Foreign Secretary’s opening remarks called attention to the,commitments into which the Government had entered sinctf he spoke at ’Chatham House a year ago.

"Today,” he said, “we are bound by new agreements for mutual defence with Poland and Turkey. We have guaranteed assistance to Greece and Rumania against aggression, and I we are now engaged with the Soviet in negotiations—to which I hope there may very shortly be a successful issue—with the view of associating the Soviet* with us for the defence of States in Europe whose independence and neutrality may be threatened. We have assumed obligations and are preparing to assume more, with a full understanding of their consequences.”

Such great changes in British policy, he proceeded, could not have been brought about had they not been backed by the deep conviction of the British people. That conviction was strengthened by what they heard and read almost daily from other parts of the world. V Provocative Insults. “We read mischievous misrepresentations of our actions and motives which some people in countries holding a different international philosophy from our own think fit to make,”/ he said. “We read them with resentment, knowing that they are false and knowing that those whb make them know it too. These things do not pass unnoticed here. Nor, I may say, 'do the provocative insults offered our fellow-country-men further afield. I can say at once that Britain is not prepared to yield either to calumnies or to force. “It may afford some satisfaction to those who have pronounced our nation to be decadent to learn that they themselves have found the cure, and one which is most effective.

“Every insult offered to our people, and every rude challenge to what we value and are determined to .defend only unites us, increases our determination, and strengthens our loyalty to those others who share our feelings and aspirations.

“Over a large part of the world the old standards of conduct and ordinary human decency which man has laboriously built up are being set aside. Things are being done today which we can hardly read without amazement, so alien are they to our conception of how men should deal with their fellowmen. The rules of conduct between nations are overridden with the same callous indifference as rules of conduct between man and man.” •

Coming to a restatement of British aims "as boldly and with such plainness of speech as I can command,” he said emphatically: “Our first resolve is to call a halt to aggression. I need not recapitulate the acts of aggression which have taken place or the effect they have bad. upon the trust European nations feel they are able to place in words and undertakings. For that reason, and for that reason alone, we have joined with other nations to meet the common danger. These arrangements, we all know and the world knows, have no purpose other than defence. They mean what they say—no more and no less.” 1

Reply to “Encirclement."

This clear enunciation of British intentions brought Lord Halifax to an examination of the most frequent misrepresentation to which they are subject, namely, that they constitute a policy of "encirclement,” and to that he ■ proceeded to give an answer in terms of complete frankness. “We arc told,” he said, “thal our motives are to isolate Germany within a ring of hostile States, to Stille her natural outlets, and to cramp and tl’rottle the very existence of a great nation. What are the facts? They are ver? simple, and everybody knows them. Germany is isolating herself and doing it most successfully and com pletely. She is isolating herself from other’countries economically by . her policy of autonomy, politically by a police that causes constant anxiety to

other nations, and culturally by her policy o£ racialism.

“If you deliberately isolate yourself from others by your own actions you can blame nobody but yourself, and as long as this isolation continues the inevitable consequences of it are bound to become stronger and more' marked.

“The last thing we desire is to see any individual German man, woman or child suffering privations. But if they do so the fault does not lie with us, and it depends on Germany and Germany alono whether this process of isolation continues or not, for any day it can be ended by a policy of cooperation." SPEECH DESCRIBED AS WARLIKE Rejection By German Spokesmen (Received June 30, 8 p.m.) June 30. Reuters’ correspondent in Berlin says official quarters declare that Lord Halifax’s speech contains nothing new. The political spokesman said: We are experiencing a wave of British oratory. It would be better if Britain did not. keep repeating that she is not aggressive and does not want to encircle us. That only makes us suspicions. The semi-official organ, the “Deutsche Dlenst,” rejects the speech as emphatically as the recent British memorandum on the Naval Treaty. It refers to the speech as “hypocrisy, with highsounding phrases and empty words. Britain should cease attempting to make her policy appear peaceful in the eyes of the German people while awaiting the conclusion of the negotiations for the further encircling of Germany, it states. What London is hastening to undertake shows all the signs of having a preventive war as its goal. NOT CONSTRUCTIVE, SAYS x ITALY (Received June 39, 8 p.m.) ROME, June 30. A semi-official news agency characterizes the speech as “devoid of any constructive proposals whatever.”