BRITISH POLICY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 110, 12 May 1939, Page 9

BRITISH POLICY

FOREIGN GRIEVANCES

READINESS FOR DISCUSSION

INTERPRETATION BY MR. MENZIES

(British Offlclal Wireless.)

RUGBY, May 10

Much interest has been shown in London in reports of the speech made by the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr. R. G. Menzies, in the debate on foreign affairs in the House of Representatives at Canberra yesterday.

Mr. Menzies spoke of the magnificent example of forbearance set by Britain in the last two years in dealing with European affairs. An endeavour had been made, he said, to understand and show patience, but unfortunately this display of patience and good will had not got the response it deserved.

Mr. Menzies's interpretation of the policy now being pursued by Britain has special interest, because it is at once authoritative, owing to the arrangements by which the Dominion Governments are kept fully and continuously informed by Whitehall, and detached, owing both to the constitutional position of the members of the Commonwealth and to Australia's remoteness from events in Europe.

Mr. Menzies emphasised that the basis of British policy was that if grievances were to be examined it should not be at the point of the sword but at the conference table. There were, he said, no grievances or claims which the democratic countries were not prepared to examine without prejudice. If dictatorships refused to confer, then, if war came, in Mr. Menzies's opinion, the whole world would know by whose aggression it had come.