IS WAR-THREAT PLAN EXHAUSTED?

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 92, 20 April 1939, Page 8

IS WAR-THREAT PLAN EXHAUSTED?

No Government will go to war if its purpose can be served by a threat of war. In the September-October crisis the purpose of the Hitler Government was fully served, for the time being, by a threat of war; and the impetus of that threat, carrying on, completed the liquidation of Czecho-Slovakia. But the vital question is: When a situation arises in which war-threats no longer accomplish the Hitler Government's purpose, will the Hitler Government then proceed from' threat to action? "Pertinax," in his cabled observations, does not attempt to answer that question; he does, however, lean to the view that a war-decision in Berlin is "not yet." . Competent military authorities in Paris and. London have reached the conclusion that no serious decision to make war has yet been reached in Berlin —not to mention Rome, which is dropping more and more into the position of a junior associate deprived of any will of her own. If anyone tries to analyse the situation with the purpose of defining exactly when war-threats will be replaced by war itself, he is confronted with the fact that war-threats, as used in Berlin, are a more versatile weapon than they would appear to be at first glance. Besides operating on the. nerves of the mass population of a democracy, totalitarian war-threats are directed against the whole vital economy and finance of democratic Powers. Totalitarianism says, in effect, to the democracies: "If we cannot panic your peoples, we will make you spend on arniaments till your system breaks." The first attack, therefore, is a blackmailing of the mass populations; the second attack is a bankrupting of the economic regime; after that, perhaps, war. In the opinion of "Pertinax," the first attack is practically over, since the alarmed and unafraid democracies

now stand to arms; but the second attack is still on, and is intensifying.

The totalitarian Powers aim at forcing the democracies to take unceasing military precautions and to throw them into an ever more exhausting armaments race. The totalitarian Powers aim to hold up business, discourage investment, check the circulation of capital, and unbalance Budgets.

The scope of this bankrupting attack on democracies, who are forced into an uneconomic armaments race, may be judged by reading in detail the contentions of "Pertinax" and also the facts and figures with which we reinforce them in another column. Is the Hitler Government able and willing to drag the democratic world, along with the Hitler world, into a financial abyss of Herr Hitler's making? Are the laws of solvency which a democratic economic regime dare not break, except at extreme penalty, now powerless to harm Hitlerism and its "autarkic"? Or is Hitlerism still bound by those laws as others are, and will Hitlerism be incapacitated by its own poison before it has succeeded in murdering the economic system of Europe? In short, as "Pertinax" puts it, can the Dictator regimes "continue to surmount their domestic difficulties and escape the consequences of the torture they propose to reserve for others"? On this assessment of war-threat values —both blackmail values and bankrupting values —the totalitarian policy of threat of war (in lieu of war) might continue for some time yet. Might! On the other hand, cracks in the totalitarian economic structure could precipitate a situation which might pass beyond rational control.