EUROPE TO-DAY

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 10, 13 January 1933, Page 7

EUROPE TO-DAY

"IRON REALITIES"'

CHURCHILL ON PEACE

THE NOTE TO GERMANY

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 29th November. Mr. Churchill has returned to the House after his illness and was one of the principal speakers in the debate on the Address-in-Reply. He surveyed the position in Europe.and had a good deal to say about disarmament and the "iron realities" below the surface of European affairs. "Germany has paid since the war an indemnity of over one thousand million pounds sterling, but she has borrowed at the same time two thousand millions sterling with which to pay this indemnity and to equip her factories. Now she has come to Lausanne freed virtually from: all those reparations. At ,the same time the commercial debts may well prove ultimately to be irrecoverable. "Now the demand is that Germany should be allowed to re-arm. Do not let us delude ourselves. All those bands of splendid Teutonic youth marching to and fro in Germany with the light of desire to suffer for their fatherland in their eyes, they are not looking for status. "They are looking for weapons, and when they have the weapons, believe me, they*will then ask for the restoration of lost territories and lost colonies, and when that demand is made it canont fail to shake, and possibly shake to their foundations many countries of Europe. LIMIT OF DISARMAMENT. "But besides Germany there is Russia, who has made herself an Ishmael among the nations. Russia, with her enormous and rapidly increasing armaments, her limitless man power, and. her corrosive hatreds, with her frontiers upon whole lines of countries which have newly gained their independence. "We, with our heavy burdens and wide Imperial responsibilities, ought to be very careful not to meddle imprudently or beyond our proportionate station in this tremendous European structure; for if we were" to derange the existing foundations—of force though they be—we might easily bring about the very catastrophe that of all we desire to avert and avoid. "What-would haprjen to us then nobody can predicate. If we had the sense that by the part we had played in European affairs we had precipitated a catastrophe, I think our honour might be engaged in a way beyond the limitations which our treaties and agreements prescribed. "We must not forget, and the United States must not forget, that we have disarmed while others have rearmed — (cheers) —and we must not be expected to undertake a part larger than is in our capacity to make good. (Cheers). For that reason I thought that the Note which the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary sent to Germany a couple of months ago was a wise, prudent, and necessary document.'' (Cheers). He had formed the opinion that none of the nations concerned in the Disarmament Conference, except Great Britain, had been prepared willingly to alter to its own disadvantage its ratio of armed strength. We have done it on the land, on the sea, and in the air. Now the Government says we have reached the limit, and I ■ think we all agree with them in that." <(Loud Ministerial cheers)., MARCHING BACKWARDS. "We have steadily marched backwards since. Locarno," continued Mr. Churchill. "Look at the distance we have fallen since then. Pears are greater, rivalries are sharper, military plans are more closely concerted, military organisations are more carefully and definitely developed; Britain is weaker, and Britain's period of weakness is Europe's period of danger. "All over Europe, except here, there is hardly a factdry which has not been prepared for its alternative war service, and every detail worked out for its immediate transformation-upon the signal;" Statesmen were saying smooth things and uttering pious platitudes or sentiments to gain applause without relation to the underlying facts. "Justi as the late Lord Birkcnhead,'' he proceeded, '' said about India: 'Tel the truth to India,' I say now to our Government tell the truth to the British people. They are a tough people. They' may be offended at the moment. But.if you tell them exactly what was going on'you can-insure yourselves against protests when you come on the morrow of the Disarmament Conference. (Cheers). "France, as Lord Grey recently reminded us, though armed to the teeth, is pacificist to the core) No initiative for making trouble can come from France or her associates. I think we ought to see there is something good to replace French discipline before we press unduly to weaken the factors of safety upon which their security depends. A GENERAL BR*INCIPLE. "I say frankly L would rather see another ten years or twenty of onesided..armed peace than see a war between equally well-matched Powers or combinations. And that may easily be the choice. (Cheers). "I do not believe in the, imminence of war, in Europe. I believe that with wisdom and skill we shall never see it in our time. I put my confidence, first of all, upon the strength" of the French Army; secondly, upon the preoccupation of Russia in the Far East, on account of the enormous increase in the armament of Japan; and thirdly, upon the general loathing of war which prevails in all countries not dissatisfied with the late peace. _ "Here I will propound a general principle. The removal of the just grievance of the vanquished ought to precede the disarmament of the victors. (Cheers). The bringing about of anything like equality of armament while the grievances are unredressed would appoint the day for another European war.