WAR LESS LIKELY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 117, 18 April 1939, Page 7

WAR LESS LIKELY.

WARNING TO DICTATORS

UNITED STATES VIEWS.

NEW Y T ORK, April 16.

The New York Times, anticipating the rejection of President Roosevelt’s appeal by Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini, comments that President Roosevelt’s initiative cannot properly be regarded as having iailed if it has merely failed to achieve something uuaehieveable. The dictators’ record was too full of broken promises for a pledge to keep the peace by either to alter the fundamentals of the present position, the paper states. “There is no more realistic standard whereby to judge the results of the President s initiative. He sought to identify unmistakably the aggressors in advance of war and also rally world opinion on the side of the victims of aggression. He accomplished both purposes. “Moreover, he may have made the outbreak of war less likely through his warning to the dictators that the risks involved were greater than they may assume. They are greater because the victims of German and Italian aggression can count on at least immense moral support everywhere throughout the world.” The New York-Herakl Tribune comments; “It is no accident that the President's message was so worded that if it is not accepted at face value by dictators it will stand as an indictment of their policy. “As a powerful act of diplomatic policy (backed up by the fleet's recall) for a British and French coalition as a warning to the axis and so as a practical contribution to the prolongation of peace by the only method (the power of polities) which the axis Powers have admitted to have validity. it may not succeed. It involves certain though minimal risk of further American entanglement, but the maintenance of peace to-day is a matter of such importance to the United States ns to the rest of the world, that some risks seem plainly justified. ’