TERMS OF PEACE

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 November 1939, Page 8

TERMS OF PEACE

IDEAS OF THE NAZIS Now that the peace offensive has collapsed and the Germans are announcing their intention of getting on with the war, it is of interest to examine the conditions under which they would have been willing to conclude peace. One passage from the speech of Herr von Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister, delivered in Danzig on October 24, makes it fairly clear that the conclusion of peace was to be on the usual lines of an agreement with the Nazis. That is to say, the German Government would get what it wanted, and the other party would recognise that it should get it. In the course of his speech, the Nazi Foreign Minister declared that Germany was not seeking world domination; this assertion was “a stupid lie.” (“Every schoolboy,” he said, “knows that there is no longer such a thing as world domination, and probably will not be in the future. Moreover, there is no part of the world where the British flag is not waving against the will of the people in question, and where deeds of violence, robbery, and lies do not mark the path of British imperialism.”). German policy had “very limited aims,” as Herr Hitler had again and again revealed. They consisted of tlie safeguarding of the life and future of the German people in its natural lebensraum (living room), which secures for the German people a moderate standard of life and makes its cultural development possible. The process of consolidating the Reich in Europe had concluded. The injustice of Versailles had been removed. By reason of the new order in the East, Germany had colonising space (siedlungsraum) for generations, and it was at present trying to unite in this area the scattered German groups which could be resettled there. Germany’s frontiers to the north, east, and south were now definite frontiers. With the exception of the return of the German colonies, “the natural colonial activities to which every Great Power is entitled,” Germany fin'd no demands against Britain and France.

From the terms of this speech it will be seen that the peace offer evidently contemplated no nonsense about changes in Poland, or the restoration of independence to any of the subject races over which the German flag flies “against the will of the people in question.” The mission of these territories is to provide colonising space for Germans, and there was to be no argument about that, merely a peace which recognised the fact. The speech also revealed the truth of the British comment that von Ribbentrop never understood the psychology of the British people.