When the War Ends

Franklin Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 22, 26 February 1940, Page 3

When the War Ends

PAPER PEACE SCHEMES Although Mr Chamberlain will not have satisfied those who like to see the blueprints of the new world prepared to the last detail, he has made a valuable beginning. The speech should do a great deal to convince opinion abroad —there was no necessity at home —that our aims are not selfish or imperialist. It is

tempting for the Opposition, and particularly for. an Opposition like the Labour Opposition that has so great an affection for extensive paper schemes, to wish for a detailed programme (which we could all set about at once to pull to pieces), but one wonders whether if Mr Attlee were in Mr Chamberlain’s place, with a frightful war only just begun, he would be so rash to comply. There are directions in which as time goes on the Governluent could with profit be more explicit. It could well profit, for instance, and be much more outspoken about our ideas on the future of colonies. It would impress American opinion rather more were greater emphasis laid on the removal of the economic causes of international discontent. But, much as we should be interested to see them, we can hardly blame the Government for not here and now producing precise proposals for the limitation of national sovereignties in a new European order. We shall have to be a good deal nearer winning the war before we can venture beyond the broadest of first principles.—“ Manchester Guardian. ’