HASTENING TO ARM

Evening Post, Issue 28, 1 August 1936, Page 9

HASTENING TO ARM

BRITAIN'S NEW COURSE

HER SENSE OF SECURITY. GONE

PERIL OF DICTATORS

One returns to England remembering last year, -which brought the brilliant pageant of the late King George's Jubilee—what it was like then. There was sunshine in England, the air was like champagne, the countryside was a welter of perfumed blossom and in London the parks were all in their glory (writes Frederick Birchall. to the "New York Times"). Beyond and above all that there was great joy throughout the land. The "World War and its aftermath had faded "to distant memories. The dark days of economic distress were brightening, and the bright sun of economic prosperity seemed just ahead. Never had the people of England felt so united, so secure, so powerful and confident as in, the emotion of that week. London is just the same outwardly now. Again there is the perfume of hawthorn and apple-blossom in the surrounding countryside. The parks are a vision of painted satin against a background of ancient grey and green. Two hundred thousand tulips have been set out and they are all in full bloom. The bluebells are out in the woods and Kew Gardens are one great azure carpet. Outwardly it is the same England. Yet something is changed. One senses it almost immediately and sets about seeking what it is. One realises presently that it is a" matter of spirit. That conviction of strength and security that one noted last year is missing. It is so obvious after a while that nobody remembering last year could mistake it, and the reasons are equally plain. - SENSE OF UNITY GONE. ' Tha sense of unity has gone with the good King who exemplified it and has passed, leaving a new and untried ruler, though of great promise, in his place. But it has been wrecked not by the change in the monarchy but by political squabbles and a growing revolt against Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, who came in with such glowing prospects only a year ago. The sense of strength has gone because of what Italy. has been able to do to British prestige in the last year and under the. threat of what another and more powerful neighbour now feverishly re-arming may be able to do in the immediate future. ; The sense of security has gone because after years of slumber the people are now awakening to the perils they face">from dictatorships they hate because they are a negation of their own British principles. They are not fully awake yet, though, or there would be an uprising which would shake this Government to its foundations ,and cast into outer darkness some political dreamers of the past. But they are awakening and beginning to ask; under the stimulus of speeches in Parliament . reinforced by the news from abroad, how. the Government could have lulled them into so false a sense of security and why even now it moves'so slowly. Because there is little reassurance either in the speeches or the news. The giant has been asleep and is now rousing himself, but ponderously. It is like a huge truck with tremendous power but several speeds getting into motion to catch-up 'with^another big truck that is. going full1 tilt;I'For the present the first truck is only in first speed, and it takes a lot of chugging to get the motor in motion at all. •': ; - . .■<•■■ The Government has inspected some four hundred factories to see what is heeded to fulfill its armament requirements and is "about to inspect several hundred more.1' It has enlisted 1500 new air pilots, but they have got to be trained. The biggest programme since the naval race following the war has been (announced, but at present it is only a plan. ■ DEFENCE AGAINST THE AIR. A Government Committee is working on plans for the. defence of the civil population against air attacks and the Government is going to . order 30,000,000 gas masks. Another Committee is laying plans for control of the food supply in war time and is arranging to begin storing wheat and other essentials.on a scale Britain has never known. It is one lesson learned at last from the submarine blockade of twenty years ago. ■But the preparations eleswh'ere are already far ahead. An enormous German air force was conscripted and selected many months ago. German factories have been listed, reorganised, and turned to new'uses for more than a year, and have long been going full blast. They ceased even making typewriters about the time the Rhineland was ■ remilitarised. German attics were cleared of inflammables, and German cellars were being gun-proofed two years vago, and gas squads have been drilling the populace in defensive measures for more, than a year. As.for the food supply, foreign correspondents were marvelling over the co-ordination of German agriculture and describing the huge land reclamation projects then under way long before Britain woke up. , The British giant must show speed very soon if he is to be even half ready should the other giant decide to loose his thunders a little ahead of time. \ The British difficulties are enormous, but they will have to be overcome. There is a great, shortage of the tools and gauges necessary to equip machines that will make guns and aeroplane parts. There is even a more vital shortage of skilled mechanics who can make these tools and use these machines. There is a shortage of suitable factories, and many existing ones will have to be made over. For all this'large sums of money will be needed, and the Government will have to furnish them. Hence new taxes are about to be imposed—fresh burdens added to those of a people long sighing for relief. But they will be endured. CHAMBERLAIN'S WARNING. "No man hesitates to set his firefighting appliances in readiness," the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in introducing the recent Budget, "when already, he can feel the heat of the flames in his face." It is phrases like this that are startling and stirring up the country. The people had not realised it was that close. They note, however, that the King has suddenly taken the ceremonial inspection of crack regiments and that after-dinner speakers begin to emphasise the duty of youth to join volunteer territorial forces lest "some other plan be forced upon the .Government." That is a plain hint at con-' scription. The reason—which the intelligent quickly divine—is that there is a serious slump in recruiting for the army. The last war took all the glamour out of soldiering, and it left a million British dead. Yet there' still survives one typically British prejudice that is hampering all preparations. Sir Thomas Inskip, Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence, voiced it in his speech to the House of Commons, and Mr. Winston Churchill promptly challenged it. These

preparations must not interfere with trade. It is reminiscent of the defiant British slogan, "Business as usual," which was heard when the last war started, and which was quickly suppressed by eventualities. It is beginning to be realised that trade must again be interfered with lest something more formidable snuff it out altogether. •■ :.. The process is being helped by the [ sense of humiliation that has seeped, through the nation, and it accounts in part for the national seriousness this Maytime. Since the last jubilee Britain has suffered a blow in her pride such as she has not felt since the Dutch sailed up the Thames in Charles ll's time, and their ships patrolled the Channel with brooms at the mastheads. She has suffered it, moreover, at the hands of a nation that most Britons looked upon as a second-rate Power, but which nevertheless has successfully defeated fifty-one other nations that Britain marshalled and led at Geneva. FAILURE OF BLUFF. Bluff failed against this stubborn and hard-headed antagonist. The British Fleet went to the Mediterranean, but it is beginning to come home. Bluff did not succeed, partly because the British these days are too pacifically minded to fight for anything but their own hearth-stones;. still more, because British naval and military leaders realised only too well that if the bluff was called they were in no position to tackle two dictators at the same time, with the possibility that Japan might simultaneously stir up things in the East. This is virutally admitted now. In the days before 19U, Sir Thomas Inskip said, Britain had only one potential, enemy to consider, but now there is' no limit to the possible combination against her. So the British are playing for time, hoping the dictatorships will behave until British re-armament has made real progress. Therein lies the explanation of the questionnaire that was addressed after long delay to Germany and that will be answered after some delay, while Geneva talks on and a few more months are gained. The'wistful dream of the more hopeful is of a new European deal, with Germany back in a reformed and chastened League of Nations, reinforced by regional pacts that will give France security and evermore prevent any great. Power from nurturing designs upon a weaker Power. It is a dream that envisions Stresemann as still living or a new Stresemann directing in his spirit the policy of a country that has many scores to even. But the likelihood is, and' the British Ministers know it, that it is only a dream in a harsh and realistic world. It is only the optimistic who cherish it. Under harsh realities that daily make the dream more remote of fulfilment, the British are apprehensive and uncomfortable. It is that feeling that pervades and neutralises the pleasant aspect of Maytime and makes it different from May of yesteryear.