Recovering the Initiative

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 132, 7 June 1939, Page 12

Recovering the Initiative

I hope and believe that the time haa at length come for the Western Power* to recover their initiative, write# Mr. J. A. Spender in the Yorkshire Observer. Britain is evidently on much stronger ground than last September. In the subsequent seven months Prance ha# had a remarkable recovery and Britain’s defensive armaments have great* ly advanced. Hitler’s attack on a nonGerman people has roused the surrounding nations, especially Poland and Humania, to a sense of their danger, and opened up strategic possibilities which were not then in sight. Not least, Mr. Chamberlain ’s patience in pursuing a policy of peace, though it has exposed him to the charge of being a dupe and a simpleton, has had a remarkable effect in Europe, and has convinced immense numbers—even in Germany, and Italy—that if war comes it will not be his fault or the fault of Great Britain. Finally, if war nad come last September, it would have been possible for Herr Hitler to represent it a# an attempt by the western nations to prevent .$,000,000 Germans from rejoining their Fatherland, whereas if it came now it would obviously be the result of his aggression upon non-Germans.