IMPRESSIVE SPEECH

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 28 April 1922, Page 8

IMPRESSIVE SPEECH

MR LLOYD GEORGE ON THE

SITUATION

BY CABLE—PBESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT ■Received April 28, 9.20 a.m LONDON, April 27. The Australian Press Association correspondent at Genoa say that Mr Lloyd Ueorge's speech to the journalists was most impressive. He said the conference was the greatest and most important ever held. Whether it succeeds or fails it was bound to have a great and lasting effect upon the future of the Continent, and would affect other continents to a greater degree than any other conference in the history of the woidd. The question whether the carnage shall cease in Europe depends on this conference. Some people- were impatient because solutions had not been found in a single fortnight, but the Washington Conference took three months and it was worth every hour. The whole of the) frontiers of Eastern Europe, from the: Baltic to the Black Sea, were unsettled. I J£very one of them involves the possibility of a terrible conflict. The racial lava of Eastern Europe was boiling with the possibilities of conflicts, which would have drawn in the whole of Europe, and may even invole distant America. Then you have Russia and Gerananv in a state of semi-antagonism to the rest of Europe. Anybody who imagines that you can permanently keep down these two great people representing two-thirds of the people of E-urope must eitherlbe blind or blinkered as it to its possibility. The insanity of the Russian-German (agreement is a revelation to. some people. I ventured to give a warning a long time ago as to what was inevitable unless there was a good understanding. When hungry Russia is equipped by angry Germany, how long will it be before Europe Is devasted if that should xepaftei^et the policy of any European combination, for the moment. We belong to a dominant triumphant group, but these things do not last for ever. If our victory degenerate? . into oppression; if it is tinctured or tainted by selfish interests; if the conscience of mankind feels thai we have abused the triumph. God has placed in our hands, then vengeance will inevitably follow, just as it followed ir the wake of the act by Germany, whict outraged the world' moral sense.