Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 28 December 1937, Page 4

Timely Topics

ATTITUDE TOWARDS GERMANY. The truth is that British public opinion is probably far ahead of the Government in its conviction that a clear understanding with Germany on colonial and other questions would have consequences more prolound and more conducive to a stable peace than any other single object of British foreign policy, says “The Times.” There is little sympathy here with the view, which has sometimes seemed to prevail on the Continent, that the proper way to treat Germany is to ring her about with vigilant allied States, sometimes masquerading as the League of Nations, like trained elephants round a tiger in the jungle, to prevent her expansion in any direction beyond the limits imposed 20 years ago. She has broken' those limits here and there already—broken them by methods which are creditable neither to herself nor to the rest of the world—'and every' article of statesmanship suggests that a halt should be called in a process which must otherwise lead inevitably to war and to the downfall of civilisation in the West. Let us at least be clear at what point a stand should be made, and let us make a supreme effort, so far as Great Britain is concerned, to do what is possible for appeasement before that point is reached. The German appetite for expansion is not to be satisfied—it may even be stimulated —by an isolated gesture. The recovery of her former colonies may pot even be what Germany most desires. But her other known desires are not directly a British interest; for the moment at all events the colonial issue fakes first place in her list of grievances; and there is assuredly no case for refusing to discuss it, as part of a general settlement, in a frank 'and friendly spirit.