WARNING TO GERMANY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21979, 14 June 1933, Page 14

WARNING TO GERMANY

COMMONS .DEBATE I, ■ - NO TIME FOR TREATY REVISION INDIGNATION IN BERLIN. i (From Oue Own Correspondent.) LONDON, April 18. The final meeting of the House of Commons before it rose for the Easier recess was notable for the consideration and criticism of German political affairs. Mr Attlee raised the subject of foreign affairs and asked what was the real position regarding the Four-Power Pact. Mr Ramsay MacDonald said that practically all the hostile criticism as to what had been done in regard to the FourPower Pact and the Government attitude to the German claim for revision had proceeded on pure assumption. So far as any question of revision was concerned, the revision, as far as it had been considered, was a revision for peace. The revision was not away from the League of Nations, but in the League of Nations and through the League of Nations.

Sir Austen Chamberlain, a former Foreign Secretary, said that what was passing in Germany seemed to him to render this a singularly inopportune moment to talk about the revision of treaties. He did not base his, criticism on newspaper accounts of what was happening in Germany. He based his case upon the statements of Germans in authority. I am not going to enter into a discussion of the internal happenings of Germany, except in so far as they are applicable and pertinent to a debate on foreign affairs (continued Sir Austen). What is this new spirit of German nationalism? The worst of the All-Prussian Imperialism, with an added savagery, a racial pride, an exclusiveness which cannot allow to any fellow-subject not of “pure Nordic birth ” equality of rights and citizenship within the nation to which he belongs.— (Cheers.) Are you going to discuss revision with a Government like that? you going tc discuss with such a Government the Polish Corridor? The Polish Corridor is inhabited by Poles; docs the Government dare to put another Pole under the heel of sxich a Government? — (Cheers.) After all, wo stand for something in this country. Our traditions count for our own people and for Europe and the world. Europe is menaced and Germany is afflicted by this narrow, exclusive, aggressive spirit, where it is n crime to be in favour of peace and a crime to be a Jew. — (Cheers.) That is not a Germany to which we can afford to make concessions.— (Cheers.) That is not a Germany to which Europe can afford to give the equality of which the Prime Minister spoke. That is xnore than ever he promised. I xmderstood that the promise. made by the Five Powers was of equality of status, to be reached by stages. Before you can afford to disarm or to urge others to disarm you must sco a Germany whose mind is turned to peace, who will use her equality of status to secure hex - own safety, hut not to menace the safety of others; a Germany which has learnt not only how to live by herself but

how to let others live inside her and

beside her. — (Loud cheers.) “GERMANY GOT OFF LIGHTLY.” Mf Winston Churchill said that when he read the speeches of the leading Germap Ministers, he thanked God that they had not got the heavy cannon, the thousands of military aeroplanes, and the tanks of various sizes for which they had been pressing so as to have an equality of status with other nations. The denunciation in recent years of the treaties of Versailles and Trianon had been exaggerated. Germany, he contended, had got off lightly after the war. If we thought of what would have happened to us and France and Belgium if Germany had won the war,

we need not break our hearts deploring Germany’s treatment under the Versailles Tx-eaty. As surely as Germany acquired full military equality with her neighbours while her own grievances were still unredressed, and while she was in the temper which we had unhappily seen, we should see ourselves within a measurable distance of a renewal of a general European war. The oppression of the Jews must excite, indignation in everyone who felt that men and women had a right to live in the world, and the right to pursue their livelihood in (he land of their birth. REFUGE IN PALESTINE, Sir John Simon, Foreign Secretary, said that civil liberty, on . which neighbourly relations so often depended, was being gravely menaced by the German treatment of Jews. That was not a Jewish outlook or the outlook of a section or a party. ' A considerable number of people who were endeavouring to leave Germany were applying to enter our own ports. He was sure that at the present time the sentiment of our own people would not wish us to be unfeeling or niggardly in administering that branch of our law. Britain had decided to grant facilities for German Jews to enter Palestine. A greater number of immigration certificates woxxld be granted to the labouring classes, and concessions to those who had capital and to parents and relatives of Jews already in Palestine. In commexxting on the debate, The Times asks: “ How far is the Hitler Government responsible for the excessive exuberance of its followers? “ If. all the earlier speeches of Signor Mussolini and his immediate supporters had been literal programmes of policy, Fascist Italy would have been the most dangerous disturber of peace in Europe; whereas the opposite has been the case. And it is right to remember that Herr Hitler’s speeches since his accession to power have not been provocative, nor has his foreign policy been anything but correct. It must also be remembered that other countries besides Germany are interested in the promotion of the revision of treaties, and that the preferment of their claims has never been made in an untoward manner.” ■ GERMAN OPINION.

Although, German newspapers have some hard things to say about the debate, and especially about Sir Austen Chamberlain and Mr Churchill, there seems to be in most of the comments a recognition of the fact that foreign opinion should not be ignored. In its leading article the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung says: “At the present moment the Germans in Poland arc exposed to the most savage terror*- and mob law. And yet the members of the English Parliament, with men such as Sir Austen Chamberlain and Mr Churchill at their head, find no single word of regret for these illegal and cruel acts. “ Against Germany they direct, the accumulated forces of their attacks. No Minister and no speaker in the Commons stands up to counteract their exaggera*; tions and distortions.” The German Government’s indifference to opinio?] abroad is deprecated, and it is added that not even Bismarck could afford to take up such an attitude. The Boerscn-Zeituug, whose political tendency is Hitlerite, says it is incomprehensible that such lack of appreciation and such hcartlcssncss should be found among “ our Anglo-Saxon blood brothers.”

The paper attributes the British attitude to “ Marxist propaganda.” It deduces with regret from this historic debate that the traditional gentleman in British politics has had to give place to the political obscurantist. The D.A.Z. thinks that Sir John Simon’s outline of the scope of the FourPower Pact “ puts the German Government before a completely new situation,” and shows the change of heart to which the British Parliament has yielded itself —“under an unbridled campaign of moral encirclement against Germany.” The German Government, it a''ds, cannot let this “ monstrons provocation by the British Parliament pass unanswered.”