TOPICS OF THE TIMES

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVIII, Issue 4633, 8 December 1934, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Cultivating Disaffection. I

Sir Thomas Inskip, the British Attorney-General, in a letter to a correspondent on the Incitement to Disaffection Bill, states that everyone was proud of the splendid loyalty and discipline of the troops. “But,” the letter proceeds, “an organisation now exists for the deliberate purpose of changing that happy state of affairs. It is financed and directed from abroad. It has nothing to do with peace or free speech. It is essentially anti-British, and, moreover, opposed to all sound principles of democratic government. It would be folly, in my opinion, to wait —till its poisonous work succeeds.” The Attor-ney-General, in defending the measure, declares: “The sole effect of the bill is to make fresh and, as I think, better provision for the trial of persons charged with attempting to seduce a soldier or sailor from his duty of allegiance, and to prevent the persons who engage in this underhand business from carrying out their designs.” Referring to the Bishop of Birmingham’s comment that the bill “makes active pacifism in the time of war a criminal offence,” Sir Thomas Inskip adds: “If the Bishop of Birmingham means to include in the phrase ‘active pacifism’ the right to persuade a soldier to mutiny, then the Bishop, no doubt, is correct in his statement of the law. But I do not suppose the Bishop means anything of the sort. . . . The bill does not abate, by one jot, the freedom of speech which we enjoy to-day.”

Germany’s Hardships.

“In his speech at the opening of the Winter Help Campaign on Tuesday, Herr Hitler came to closer grips than usual with realities. In view of the economic sitation developing in Germany he had little choice in the matter, but the language he found it necessary to use must arouse even in the most subservient German breasts some question as to whether the Nazi regime has conferred on the country nothing but undiluted blessings. The aim of the Government, of course, is to attribute Germany’s hardships to foreign malignity, in particular t» what is called the ‘devilish' international boycott clique.’ But there was no boycott of Germany till Hitlerism appeared and Jew-baiting began, and the Fuhrer has no one but himself and his Nazi colleagues to thank if sympathies which might in other circumstances have taken practical form remain completely alienated to-day. Herr Hitler appealed for the defence of his regime on the ground that the only alternative to it was Communism. That, no doubt, is true, but he again is to be thanked for that. The decisive argument against dictatorships is that they refuse to tolerate the existence of a constitutional opposition which could take over the administration peaceably in case of need. In the absence of that the alternatives quite definitely are Communism and chaos—if, indeed, the two are not identical.” — “The Spectator.”