Evening Post. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1938 "FORMS OF SACRIFICE"

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 102, 27 October 1938, Page 8

Evening Post. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1938 "FORMS OF SACRIFICE"

"A wave of feeling in favour of the State's making a greater call upon the service of individuals" is noted by Lord Halifax in his Edinburgh speech. No one, says the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, can "move about the country without realising that this wave" is "powerfully affecting the minds of the people." He goes on to speak indefinitely, but with studied significance, ol "forms of sacrifice" which the people of Britain : might make. Now,, everyone knows that in Germany there are forms of sacrifice which the Germans have been compelled to make. One result —only one—is that Field-Marshal Goering, Germany's Minister of Air, has published figures of air strength in Germany, Britain, and France, which the "Daily Telegraph's" Berlin correspondent interprets "as a warning to Britain and France that Germany is so far ahead [in aerial hitting power] that all efforts to overtake her are useless." Useless, at any rate, unless the. whole British people, employer and employee, accept forms of sacrifice. And the lesson is not only to the people of Britain. When the German claim extends from Czechoslovakia to the mandated territories, the lesson in sacrifices also extends to the Dominions and the Empire generally. Are the mandate-holding Dominion Governments determined to hold what they have? If so, there will be forms of sacrifice to make. Either the Dominion Governments must go along with an Anglo-French policy of peace by concession, or they must disagree with it, and disagreement must involve defence of mandated territories by their own strength. A Dominion Government trying to take up a middle position would find the feat difficult now, and probably impossible at a later date with 'an expanded German navySheltered behind expensive British defences, Dominion Governments have been able in the past to shut their eyes to realities; but now the time has come to choose between appeasement and a real (and costly) self-defence. If appeasement by cession and concession is deemed contemptible, then the alternative is "Arml'V And so the Dominions too face forms of sacrifice. Re-armament is so tremendous an effort that democratic peoples can scarcely undertake it without voluntarily accepting some of the sacrifices that have been forced on Germans and Italians. Have democratic peoples retained sufficient national spirit to willingly j accept such burdens? If they have, Nazi-Fascism can be beaten at its own game. If they have not, then what is their alternative to the Chamberlain policy of appeasement which is being criticised from so many angles, and which admittedly, in many respects, is wounding to democratic pride? Re-armament against NaziFascism, whether in Britain or in the Dominions, is not a matter of faith alone; it calls for works; and the critics of the .Chamberlain policy, full of taunts, are singularly silent on the subject of the sacrifices required to meet Nazi-Fascist force by a sufficient counter-force. Can democracy, without becoming totalitarian, take a few leaves from the work-book of Nazi-Fascism? That is the root question behind Lord Halifax's speculations about forms of sacrifice. Some people assume that France and Britain control a sufficient fighting machine, but that it is not used because the Nazi policy is favoured by people in British high places. To the historian of the future, the intransigeance of such critics, may appear like a statue of Unpreparedness brandishing a sword of words. What greater crime could there be than permitting a modern war for an insufficient cause, or with an insufficient defence, in an era which f Kas brought into the firing-line every man, woman, and child? Inj the recent past, the British Government has been weakened by its own doubts, reflected by the Eden and Duff-Cooper resignations. * Even now, there is a suggestion that Lord Halifax, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, has been dragged by . the hair into the Chamberlain appeasement policy. But his Edinburgh speech reflects no such spirit of revolt. It indicates that the Foreign Secretary is anxious to try the policy right out. He feels that peace will not come by waiting; and, without reflecting on the League of Nations, he points out that revision of the Versailles Treaty, not by the Geneva road, is in actual progress. His policy is to make the best of it. In a constructive sense, no alternative policy at the moment exists.