Eden Foresees Nazi “ Peace Blitz ”

Manawatu Times, Volume 66, Issue 180, 31 July 1941, Page 8

Eden Foresees Nazi “ Peace Blitz ”

BRITAIN REJECTS PLAN IN ADVANCE NO TRUST IN HITLER (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, July 29. Speaking in London to-day, the British Foreign Minister, Mr Eden, said: “The four great cominanities moving ever closer together in their determination to withstand the common menace of Hitler and of any who works for him—the U.S.SJt., China, the United States, and the British Empire—are surely pretty formidable obstacles to aggression. It may be this sense of events to come which is causing a new note to creep into Hitler propaganda, covertly for the present but, we may be sure, more openly later on. “Hitler has broken countless prom--Ises. He has betrayed in turn every nation to which he has given pledges. ißut now, for the first time, there is a change; now he is trying desperately ito keep his promise. It is the promise ihe made to the German people—the promise that the war shall end this year in a victorious German peace. “Hitler’s time-table is plainly out of ijoint," Mr Eden added. “The Russians iare putting up a magnificent resistance which clearly exceeds the German calculations and many other calculations also.’* Mr Eden added that a "peace blits’’ would soon be hurled at the Allies, and he repeated his assurance that the British Government was not prepared to negotiate with Hitler at any time or on any subject. The offer of a compromise* peace would be a monument of moderation and sweet reasonableness—and hypocrisy. TEvery nation would have to remain at Its war stations so as not to 'be caught unawares by a sudden attack {launched without warning,” Mr Eden declared. “We could never demobilise, we could never relax our war preparations and our war restrictions, the foitifications round our coasts cou.d not he removed, and our factories would have to continue the manufacture, of munitions of war to keep up with those which Hitler would be piling up in pecret for the next war—his next bid for world domination.

The German Character. “Hitler is not a rare and transient phenomenon in Genorn history; he is a symptom. He is an expression of the present German will and temper, which has shown itself over and over again in German history. If we are to have peace in our lifetime. the German people must learn to unlearn all they have been taught, not only by Hitler, ■but by his predecessors for the last 100 years. They can never even start to do this until Hitler, the great warmaker. has been exposed as a fraud and deposed as a failure.” Speaking of the future, Mr Eden said that, although military measures would be essential, it was not part of the British purpose to cause Germany or any other country to collapse economically. He said that that was not out of any love for Germany, but because a starving and bankrupt Germany in the midst of Europe would poison all her neighbours. “While keeping watch and ward, it

will be our duty to start at once upon the fashioning of the world in such a shape that the causes of rivalry and hatred may gradually be removed and, we pray, eventually eradicated,” the Minister continued. “Here in London are the Governments of many Allied Powers. They form an invaluable nucleus for the work we shall have to do. We are already meeting and discussing our problems, though not always publicly. “If we can look forward in all this work to the sympathy and co-operation of the United States and, indeed, of the American Continent as a whole, then we can feel that we are building on a solid foundation."