INTERNATIONAL SPEEDING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23858, 12 July 1939, Page 3

INTERNATIONAL SPEEDING

One outstanding impression of this remarkable book, strong not by shining literary merit, but a singular veracity of mind, is of the frightful speed of massed passions, the gathering momentum of the avalanche, the oblivion and mist into which sink mere politicians’ devices and compromises, writes Mr Keith G. Feling in reviewing the new book, “Peace With Gangsters? ” by George Glasgow, the wellknown diplomatic correspondent. Even now it is a bare three years since Herr Hitler made his offer of a European air pact, and not four since the Italians invaded Abyssinia. Before those things democracy had 16 years given it after Versailles in which to consider its work, to weigh the cost of protecting it. to estimate its justice and its durability, and, since then, as many months to weigh other matters of which we may select three made prominent in this book; that Allied policy taught the Germans they would get nothing except by force; that Italy, for 20 years a friend, was made an enemy; that out of 1,140,000 square miles of colonial territory taken from Germany, 826.000 were added to the British Empire and most of the rest to the French—.ill under President Wilson’s 'free, openminded and absolutely impartial adr justment of all colonial claims” “Neither generous nor wise," has said Mr Neville Chamberlain, and let us leave it at that.