NAZIS RESPONSIBLE

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 98, 19 January 1940, Page 9

NAZIS RESPONSIBLE

Church Discusses Phases Of Economic War (British Official Wireless.) (Received January 18, 7.5 p.m.) RUGBY, January .17. An interesting debate took place in the Upper House at the Convocation of Canterbury today on the ethical aspects of economic warfare. The Bishop of Birmingham, Rt. Rev. Dr. Barnes, sought means of distinguishing between militarily useful supplies and those the deprivation of which might result in starvation for civilians. The Primate, the Most Rev. Dr. Lang, informed the bishops that he had consulted with the Government on the question and had learned that no discrimination was possible in practice between foodstuffs which could be converted to war uses and foodstuffs for civilian consumption. The ultimate responsibility for feeding the German civil population rested with the Nazi Government, which in willing the war, must be taken to have willed the results of the war. The Archbishop associated himself with the Bishop of Birmingham in deploring, among many unspeakable horrors which war let loose, the suffering and want inflicted on women and children. Everything that could be said against such horrors of war was an argument against the use of war as an instrument of policy. The Nazi rulers of Germany' had chosen the use of that instrument and, evil as was the.war in which that choice had plunged Europe, they could not feel. Dr. Lang declared, but that a great evil would have come upon the world if these rulers had not been resisted. The Bishop of Birmingham, after the Primate’s speech, said he had no wish to emphasize the difference, which he was certain was on practical considerations rather than on moral fundamentals. He withdrew a motion urging that a petition be sent to the Government to allow free importation of foodstuffs to Germany in accordance with the precept, “If thine enemy hungers, feed him.”