Evening Post. FRIDAY, AUGUST 18, 1939. BARRACK FROM REMOTE FENCES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 42, 18 August 1939, Page 8

Evening Post. FRIDAY, AUGUST 18, 1939. BARRACK FROM REMOTE FENCES

Self-told tales of what certain Labour members of our Parliament Avould do, if they were the British Government, are regarded by most thinking people as comic opera; but as a member of the Labour Party, Mr. Schramm, has seen fit to repudiate his colleagues' serio-comedy, it now becomes worth recording that there is at least one man in the Labour Party who possesses a sense of proportion. Hitherto, the Government has proved very laggard in rebuking rubbish spoken by its own followers. After Mr. Lee had delivered his mock attack on the Hindenburg debt line, one thing became quite obvious—either Mr. Lee was talking rubbish, or else the Government policy and the Government's | London agreement and the Budget comment were rubbish. It is not to be supposed that Ministers Avere in any doubt as to Avhether they or Mr. Lee had stated the case fairly for the "Shylocks"; but they abstained .from any repudiation of his near-repudia-tion talk until an Opposition amendment forced their hand. In like manner, they have allowed the House of Representatives to hear, unchallenged, illogical criticisms of the j international struggle by political j barrackers sitting securely on the ] farthest-aAvay fence in the world, j After several such Labour speeches in the House, it has devolved on a private Labour member, Mr. Schramm, to reply to these persons who try to bite the hand that lends and the hand that shields. The essence of the international struggle is that a nation must be not only in the right but must be in a| position to win. Its Government, and, not the barrackers, must choose its time. When the peace people (particularly the Labour, Socialist, Communist, and radical elements, with some of the British Liberals) became a pacifist war party, they did so with complete irresponsibility on the vital question of whether the nation Avas in a position to fight and to win. The paradox of 1934-39 was that in those years the peace party discovered that they Avanted to fight—or, to be more correct, those in Europe discovered that they wanted to' fight, while those in the remote overseas cordially agreed that fighting should be done by the people in the firing-line, many thousands of miles aAvay. This Avas particularly the case in Ncav Zealand, which until comparatively recent times, made no worth-while effort to fit itself for the general war Avhich New Zealand pacifists think Britain should have undertaken. New Zealand was a militarily negligible factor when, in mock-heroic mood, she voted at Geneva for the continuance of anti-Italian sanctions, of which the smaller European Powers, scenting a wider Avar, had grown Aveary. While the pacifist Avar party in Europe -was-demanding a firm policy without the means to make it effective, New Zealand was demanding a firm policy from its comparative isolation in the farthest-aAvay quarter of the globe. Nothing is surer than that the real friend of peace was the British Government and not its pacifist critics. The paradox involved in the somersault of the peace party, a paradox intensified by unpreparedness to fight, has not impressed a number of Labour members, but it has come under the notice of Mr. Schramm, who observed in the House last, night that "some of those who refused to do their part in the last War Avere noAv doing their best to plunge Britain into war." He also said: It beats me to hear Labour Socialists advocating war when for years the I policy of Labour Socialists has been j the settlement of international disputes by arbitration. Mr. Schramm's astonishment must j become intensified -when he studies ] the paradox not only from the point of view of its oAvn inner logic, but also from the point of vieAV of geographical distance from the storm centre. As distance from the Avar increases, and as preparedness for Avar diminishes, so also does keenness for a firm policy, probably involving Avar, grow with amazing intensity. We do not know what history, -will have to say of Mr. Chamberlain's j

estimate that in 1938 Britain and France were not prepared to fipht. We do not know what history will have to say of Mr. Chamberlain's estimate (indicated by his Polish policy) of greater preparedness in 1939. But we have no doubt at all of history's verdict on Mr. Chamberlain's New Zealand Parliamentary critics—unless, of course, history prefers to pass them over in charitable silence.