THE NAZIS BLAMED

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 16, 19 January 1940, Page 7

THE NAZIS BLAMED

■• WILLING OF THE WAR

CHURCHMEN'S DISCUSSION

(British Official Wireless.)

RUGBY, January 17.

An interesting debate took place in the Upper House at the Convocation of Canterbury today on the ethical aspects of economic ' warfare. The Bishop of Birmingham, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Bamqs, sought means of distinguishing [between militarily useful supplies and those the deprivation of which might result in starvation for civilians. • "

The Primate, the Most Rev. Dr. Lang, informed the bishops that he had consulted" with the Government on the question and had learned that no discrimination was possible in practice between foodstuffs' which could be converted to war uses and foodstuffs for civilian consumption. The ultimate responsibility for feeding the German civil population rested with the Nazi Government, which, in willing the war, must be taken to have willed the results of the war.<

The Archbishdp associated himself with the Bishop of Birmingham in 'deploring, among many unspeakable horrors which war let loose, the suffering and want inflicted on women and children.' Everything that could be said against such horrors -of war was an argument against the use of war as an instrument of policy. The Nazi rulers of Germany had chosen the use of that instrument,. and, evil as was the war in which that choice had plunged Europe, they could not feel, Dr. Lang declared, but that a great evil would have come, upon the world if these rulers had" not been resisted.

The Bishop of Birmingham, ■ after the Primate's speech, said he had' no wish to emphasise the difference, which he was certain was on practical considerations rather than on moral fundamentals.