Students’ World Outlook

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 35, 25 January 1932, Page 9

Students’ World Outlook

On International Affairs German Youths and War Guilt Are they also to be Branded A younger man cannot help noticing, especially around Armistice Day each year, that in the thoughts of his elders of the war generation there exists, coupled to their “never again” determination, an underlying fear. Knowing that we had no active experience of the horrors which are still a memory to them, they imagine that the League of Nations and other peace machinery for settling disputes amicably will not long survive them, lacking sympathy and public support from an age that has not directly suffered as they have, says Mr. T. Cameron Fraser, an ex-President of the British Universities League of Nations Society. Proceeding, he says: —

“I think they are very wrong. To us of the ‘post-war generation’ the war is less of a personal experience and more of an historical object lesson. It is a more complete picture along with its causes and results, than it can ever ba to those who were in the thick of it. Moreover, our lack of direct knowledge of pre-war conditions makes us, perhaps, more capable of realising the true implications of the post-war situation. In perspective wc can see the destraction of the false doctrine of ‘preparedness,’ the failure of the ‘balance of power’ system. And by bitter experience wo can realise that no participating nation has eventually benefited from war. FINDS MACHINERY JAMMED. “The student leaves his university to-day to find the world’s financial and economic machinery completely jammed, while old-fashioned engineers probe in its delicate intricacies with crowbars of nationalism and desperation. “We are faced with an ‘inevitable’ world economic depression and financial dislocation. It is only ‘inevitable,’ however, in so far as the statesmen of to-day are unable, or else unwilling, to proceed on lines of rational co-operation among the nations. For only by real concessions and limitations of national freedom can we secure real freedom from the inevitability of economic dislocation, leading eventually to the disasters of future and more terrible wars. “It is definitely from this conviction that only practical, progressive, co-oper-ative planning and organisation, both financially and economically on an international scale can put an end to this disastrous state of affairs, that tho post-war generation turns to the League of Nations. “Concentrating on the fundamental problem of tho day, we support every effort to outlaw war as a method of national policy, for peace is the first essential for organisation and reconstruction. I say this with some authority, after three years’ connection with student organisations of all sorts in Britain, and I feel that I voice tho opinions of American students also, judging from the attitude of tho many I have met all over Europe, at Geneva, and among tho Rhodes Scholars at Ox-

ford. This was also the attitude of tho delegates to tho British American Students ’ Conference at Ann Arbor last July, under the auspices of the British Universities League of Nations Society, and the International Relations Clubs of tho Carnegie Endowment. WAR “GUILT” PROBLEM. “Societies similar to these exist in most European countries, even in Germany, where the difficulties are especially great. Tho young Germans sec their country indefinitely branded with the ‘guilt’ of causing war, for which even their fathers cannot bo held exclusively responsible. They see, moreover, the prospect cf their children’s children still saddled with tlio intolerable burden of the reparations bill accepted at the poim. of the bayonet at Versailles, straining to achieve an impossible export- surplus in face of the ever-rising tariffs of tho world. Despairing of obtaining justice in disarmament. or relief from the financial shackles, by the method of international conference, they turn to the ‘self-help’ policy of Adolf Hitler. “Much of his internal programme is reasonable, but there is a crude nationalistic flavour about the rest. Yet owing to the impossible conditions of affairs in Germany to-day, his appeal is particularly effective. “If Hitlerism is a threat to international peace, then tlso statesmen of 1919 are to blame. It remains for tho statesmen cf to-day to right these wrongs, to give young Germany a chance, and to remove the brand of ‘guilt’ from those who were babes in-arms in 1914. “The alleviation of the financial burdens would prove the first step to a general world trade recovery. But, more important in the long run, we should be removing the sense of injustice which is embittering the outlook of the post-war generation in Germany: we should be restoring to them the liberalism of outlook, and the detachment of political interest, which is more natural to their time of life. We should in fact be removing the only barrier to their sharing the convictions of their contemporaries in America and Britain, and the determination to set the pace of economic reconstruction by sane international co operation.”