Comment on Current Topics.

Northland Age, Volume 6, Issue 48, 20 August 1937, Page 9

Comment on Current Topics.

A MAD WORLD SHAW once suggested that our world was the lunatic asylum of the solar system, and the gibe has even more point today. Certainly an impartial survey of world conditions would convince anyone that men collectively are behaving in an utterly irrational way. Never was there a greater horror or dread of war, the vast majority of men passionately desire to live in peace, yet every nation is pursuing a policy that must inevitably end in war, a war exceeding in rutnlessness and horror anything we can conceive, and ending in the ruin of both victors and vanquished. “Who in Europe does not know that one more war in the West, and the civilisation of the ages will fall with as great a shock as that of Rome?” asked Mr. Baldwin ten years ago. Yet in his last speech in the House of Commons he had to lament that it was necessary to spend 1500 millions of pounds, money that more wisely spent might transform Britain, on war material in the hope at best that it might be only waste; that to the cost of these mighty engines of destruction might not be added the sacrifice of at least another 20 millions of lives, like those lost in the war that was to end war. And military experts are quite frank as to what that next war will be like. General Ludendorff, the ablest of the German war-staff, in his recent book, “Totalitarian War,” says it will aim at the extermination of whole peoples, and that therefore the entire activities and every waking moment of every man, woman, and child must be directed and organised in preparation for this. This seems to be the key to German policy, of those at least who dominate the German nation. For Hitler in his book “My Struggle,” is certain that the only way to ensure peace is by war, by which Germany will dominate the nations. “Whoever would really wish from his heart for the victory of the pacifist conception in this world must devote himself by every means to the conquest of the world by the Germans” (page 315). And the marching song of his Nazi Store Troopers runs : “For Germany is ouis today and tomorrow the whole world.” It is for this madman’s dream tnac Germans seem content to sweat and suffer, to sacrifice at once freedom and food—“guns before butter.” Yet if Germany has gone crazy it does not lack company. X t X t THE SPANISH TRAGEDY 'J\AKE the solemn farce of nonintervention now being played by i Germany and Italy, France and Britain over the bitter and bloody civil war in Spain. Mussolini has poured 50,000 (possibly double that number) of his Fascist militia, with millions worth of modern war-material, into Spain in support of the rebels, but officially protests that these men are “volunteers,” over which he has not control. Germany has been more sparing of men. but more generous with war material, especially bombing planes, cold-bloodedly testing out the efficiency of their war machines on non-combatants, women and children. The destruction of Guernica, the centre of Basque culture, which sent a thrill of horror through Europe, it seems was a German experiment to try out bombing planes as instruments for breaking civil morale. It is something at least that modern war is frankly brutal and utterly callous in its attitude to human suffering, that all the romantic trappings have been stripped from its ugly features. “Man is a wolf to man,” ran the old Latin proverb; in modern war it is literally true. Britain is in the unfortunate position of wishing neither side to win, though its desperate efforts to keep the war from spreading (certainly the most sensible policy from every point of view) has on the whole proved more favourable to the rebels than the legal Government. A good deal of British capital is sunk in Spain,.

and a “Red” Government would certainly render this less secure. But a Spain dominated by Italy and Germany would be even less favourable to wider British interests. The Mediterranean sea-route is a vital Empire link, and the strengthening of Italy (dreaming of a revived Roman empire) on that sea-road, would be a constant menace. France is an even

worse case. Germany dominant in Spain would hem her in completely and leave her Spanish flank exposed to German attack. French sympathy for the Valencia Government is therefore wide-spread, and the late French Government had great pressure brought to bear on it to actively intervene. Russia, too, even more keenly interested in the success of the Government, has prudently refrained from giving official support, but has supplied an air force that has outclassed the Germans, much to German chagrin. And Madrid was saved by the gallantry of an International Brigade, with fighters from nearly every country in the world, including New Zealand. X X X X JAPAN AND CHINA r pHF Japanese are the world’s cleverist copyists, totally destitute of originality. They borrowed their old civilisation from the Chinese, their morals, art, philosophy, literature and religion, and improved on their model. In Europeanising their nation externally they copied the British navy to the frock-coat, the German army to the last button, and swallowed Western science at one gulp. Fired with Imperialist ambitions, determined to become the Britain of the Erst, Japan has set itself to conquer China as the British conquered India, by steady military and commercial penetration, dreaming like Germany, of an ultimate domination of the world. In a memorandum to the Japanese Emperor in 1927, General Tanaka, then Prime Minister, said : “In order to conquer the woild we must first conquer China. . . . With all resources of China at our disposal we shall pass forward to the conquest of India, the Archipellago, central Asia and even Europe.” And in cleverly playing off British and American trade antagonisms in China, it has secured practically a free hand in its course of conquest. In the past six years Japan has brought under direct military control Manchuria, Jehol, Inner Mongolia and Northern China now to the old capital of Pekin, territory exceeding the total area of Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, with a population of a hundred millions. This is to become a close preserve for Japanese trade, a system it hopes to extend over the whole of China, which will bring it into sharp conflict with British commercial interests, which are. centred mostly in Southern China. A hundred million potential customers means much to an industrial Japan, largely dependant, like Britain, on selling her manufactures for the means of living. But this is just where Japan’s weak

point lies. An organised Chinese boycott of Japanese goods would hit her hard, and the boycott has begun. Even since the allied invasion that followed the Boxer outbreak, the Chinese have seen large bits of Northern China occupied by foreign armed forces, but the spectacular occupation of Pekin by the Japanese has apparently deeply offended Chinese pride, a loss of national “face” impossible to forgive. In a military sense China is in no position to fight Japan, but the Nankin Government may be forced by popular clamour to do so. China, though peopled by one race had up to quite recently little national community of interest, was practically independent provinces under a weak central Government, speaking really different languages. (The Chinese football team that visited New Zealand some years ago had to converse in English among themselves to be understood). But China, like every portion of the world is rapidly changing and even an unsuccessful war against Japan would be a means of national unity. And Japan itself, its people sunk in desperate poverty, taxed to the bone, with finances already disorganised by excessive military expenditure, cannot fight even a successful war without enormous suffering, and with the chance of the conflict spreading. Russia and America are potential active enemies, and Australia and New Zealand would be glad of a lessened Japanese power to dominate the Pacific. Speaking in Wales in 1935, the Rt. Hon. Stanley Baldwin said : “Having been in international politics for most of the time since the war, I will not write myself down as a pessimist, but I will say that at times I feel that I am living in a mad-house.”