Evening Post THURSDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1943. WORLD-POWER ROLE OF BRITAIN

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 85, 7 October 1943, Page 4

Evening Post THURSDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1943. WORLD-POWER ROLE OF BRITAIN

There need be no, fear that Britain will resign her position as a world Power. Blood-loss and war-weariness will not confine her in an Old World chrysalis, and she will see this war out to the bitter end, not only in the Atlantic and Europe but in the Pacific and Asia. This assurance has been given in unequivocal terms by Mr. Churchill. President , Roosevelt has accepted Mr. Churchill's word as that of "a great English gentleman." And now a Labour member of the British National Government;.' Mr. Herbert Morrison, Home Secretary, rises to inform America that a/doubt entertained by some Americans —those who think, that although the British Government's attitude in this matter is clear, the average British citizen's point of view is less clear —possesses no foundation. Neither British Labour nor British Conservatism nor the British people themselves stand for giving the warcause of New Zealand and Australia less support than they, give to their own defence. "Smash Hitler first" was only a question of military priority. It was never a question of draining the pool of war effort in the Old World, and of piously hoping that something might be left for the Pacific and the "Far East." Neither Britain nor the British people have been blind to the fact that the "Far East", is the Near East for New Zealand and Australia. There could be no conception more unBritish than to accept New Zealand and Australian help in the Middle East, and American help everywhere, and then "pull" the British punches in the final struggle with Japan.

The people of the. British Commonwealth of Nations need no reassurance on this point, but there seems to be some section of opinion in America that needs a British Labour Minister's reassurance that the British people as well as the Churchill Government are behind Britain's to see the Japanese war right through. It is difficult to place one's self inside the cranium of the American doubters. Apparently their argument is that because Britain was staunch enough to stand alone in 1940, and to defeat Hitler's aerial prelude to invasion, and to continue standing alone until Hitler brought Russia into the war (June, 1941) and almost alone until Japan brought the United States into the war (December, 1941), therefore it follows as a matter of course that Britain will not. be staunch enough, after this gallant lonesome record, to stand besfte others to overthrow Japan. That proposition seems to be, in the minds of doubters, quite Euclidean in its completeness—in fact, almost axiomatic —but to other people it seems to be a non sequitur, if not a self-evident contradiction. But Mr. Morrison has dealt sufficiently with the doubters. He has confirmed the British declaration that the war, whatever its priorities, is one and, indivisible. "The defeat and destruction of the Japanese menace" are seen to be "a matter of life and death" for "the Pacific self-governing Dominions" as well as a vital matter for the Americans. Into Mr. Morrison's figured and documented proof that the war contributions of Britain and the Dominions are greater, relative to America's, than the doubters -believe, we need not go. Grateful for lendlease, British Empire war effort strives to be worthy of it. And succeeds.

There is a delicious irony underlying Mr. Morrison's reference to the wide gap between ideas and information. Most ideological critics of the British Empire, including in that term its nonautonomous and semi-autonomous units, base their case on selfdetermination. What did self-deter-mination do at the Versailles Peace Conference? Self-determination —excellent in its place, and conceived in the spirit of democracy—Balkanised Europe; it increased the number of small independent sovereignties to an extent that forbade economic cooperation in Europe, hampered cooperation against Fascism and Nazism, and crippled the League of Nations. The Austro-Hungarian empire, a reactionary organisation, deserved to be broken up, but the first aggressive achievement of the Nazis was the Hitlerisation of Austria. That is to say, «the practical- cohesion of the AustroHungarian empire was thrown at Versailles into the discard, along with its objectionable reactionary character. After the experiences arising from the Balkanisation of Europe—the fall of hopeful States like Czecho-Slovakia, as well as unhopeful ones—can anyone honestly think that any balance of good would result from treating the British Empire in the same way as the utterly dissimilar' Austro-Hungarian empire was treated? Would it be an improvement to have either a Hindudominated India, or the three or more Indias involved by Mohammedan partition ideas? Mr. Morrison reasonably claims that "every- community in the British Empire capable of assuming i self-government"—which the Indian factions are not —has had it. The British Empire, says Mr. Morrison, stands for cohesion; for the cohesion that Europe lacked, and thus Europe became a prey for Mussolini and Hitler. If critics reply that the British Empire cohesion is bought by domination, which is undemocratic, Mr. Morrison replies by showing that the era of domination has given way to the era of preparation for self-government.

In these days of distance-conquest, Balkanisation is altogether discounted. "A closely integrated, rapidly developing world," says this realistic Home Secretary, "is no place for multiplying the numbers of half-grown selfgoverning States. What we want is, surely, to hold fast to every fragment of cohesion and unity in the world, to build it" up, and to give it. a fuller meaning and fit it into a wider pattern. That is the real meaning of the British Empire today."