The Franklin Times PUBLISHED EVERY MONDAY, WEDNESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOON. Office and Works: ROULSTON STREET, PUKEKOHE. Phone No. 2. P-O. Box 14. “We nothing extenuate nor aught set down in malice.” MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1938. MEDIATE AND MOBILISE

Franklin Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 107, 12 September 1938, Page 4

The Franklin Times PUBLISHED EVERY MONDAY, WEDNESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOON. Office and Works: ROULSTON STREET, PUKEKOHE. Phone No. 2. P-O. Box 14. “We nothing extenuate nor aught set down in malice.” MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1938. MEDIATE AND MOBILISE

PUBLISHED EVERY MONDAY, WEDNESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOON. Office and Works: ROULSTON STREET, PUKEKOIIE. ’Phone No. 2. P-O. Box 14. “We rtothing extenuate nor aught set down in malice.”

AS the newly called French reservists walked into the Maginot line, the Czechoslovakian Government, under

British pressure, played what is believed to he its highest peace card — a new, and at the moment undefined,

series of concessions to the Sudeten

German minority. M. Daladier’s communique was written with the knowledge that while the hard pedal was being pressed in France, the soft pedal was being actuated in Prague, l'or the communique admits —with qualifyingadverbs, adjectives, and conditional clauses —that “according to the latest information, the general situation, apparently, is tending toward an appreciable relaxation of tension.” The quoted words fairly describe the news to hand at time of writing concerning Czechoslovakia’s offer. Although the published references to the offer are not detailed, and cannot be compared categorically with reported NaziSudeten German demands, the cabled statement that the offer represents “a supremely important step toward appeasement” may be accepted. It is reasonable to believe that it represents a sufficient basis for peace—if Herr Hitler wishes to press, the button for peace. But Herr Hitler’s will in the matter is determined by many factors, of which the merit of the Czechoslovakian offer is only one. .Just as the big-scale German military manoeuvres were intended to draw the' highest possible peace terms from Czechoslovakia —without any surrender by Germany of the opportunity to strike, should chance at any moment offer the pretext—so the calling to the Colours of the French reservists is intended to help Herr Hitler towards a decision to press the peacebutton. The German military pressure to force concessions from Prague ! invited French military pressure for I acceptance of the concessions when made. So the German comment that the Maginot line is not threatened by present German manoeuvres only serves to emphasise the fact that both Germany and France are using their armies in peace time to dictate diplomatic results. A diplomacy that involves not merely meetings of diplomats, but mobilisation and countermobilisation of land and air forces endowed with the fatal modern gift of immediate striking power, may settle an immediate dispute; may settle it once, and twice, even thrice, in a piecemeal way. But does anyone believe that these sudden mobilisations of conciliatory diplomacy and coercive armed force will permanently keep Europe’s peace, shocks lo which can be manufactured every day in the year? It seems very likely that the double mobilisation will calm llie Sudeten Germans for the time being. That this unholy alliance of diplomacy and Bombs can permanently prevent war is most improbable. Many years ago it was argued dial Western Europe could not repel Bolshevism with armies, because Bolshevism was “a slate of mind.” Nazi-

ism replied by creating a counter-slab of mind. It is odd to reflect that,

only a few years ago, a Nazi paper was complaining that Clara Zclkin, “a Jewess living in Moscow,” was President of the Reichstag of the then German Republic. Like a flash came Hiller, with his machinery for creating menial states, and I he GerrnanJewish situation was so transformed that the old German Republic seems

like a dream. Overnight the mentality was changed from Socialist to Nazi, from toleration to anti-Socialism and anti-Semitism. To the newly manufactured mentality the Junker-stalfed army became benevolent neutral, abettor, and finally (it seems) submissive tool. Nazism quotes all the moral jargon of democracy as the devil quotes scripture, and negotiates successfully with unconvincing moral poses and a force back-ground. Yet its greatest achievement remains the mental transformation of the German republic, and Nazism will never be other than dangerous so long as its psychological weapons remain in its hands. At the same time, the p'syhchological putsch can be masked so completely behind such a demand as “full liberty for Sudeten Germans to Prague, in putting the negative, profess German political philosophy.” phrases it as “a liberty to profess and practise Nazism” which Czechoslovakia will never permit.

The Czechs must regard with bitter ircny the making of peace concessions to people in Czechoslovakia who are actuated by another set of people outside Czechoslovakia, which latter set of people have no desire for peace. What price can buy a peace that is not wanted at any price whatever? But by cleaning the slate of all just politicalsocial debts to her own Germanspeaking population, Czechoslovakia qualifies morally for whatever support the Western democracies can give, in future crises, to a War-created iepublic, ringed with dictatorships and monarchies and representing a lone island of toleration in a sea of intolerance and militarism. —Evening Post.