THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES FRIDAY, August 25, 1939. THE ELEVENTH HOUR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23896, 25 August 1939, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES FRIDAY, August 25, 1939. THE ELEVENTH HOUR

The King of the Belgians has spoken with the personal authority of the respected ruler of a brave people, and as the representative of a group of nations which value their integrity and ask of the world only the right to live at peace, content in the ways of trade. He has added an impressive word to the pleas for a sane solution of the present crisis in the affairs of Europe, upon which a decision is being forced by Herr Hitler’s implacable demands. War, as every thoughtful man and woman must realise, would bring death to countless thousands of people who to-day are conscious of pleasure in living. War would cause incalculable destruction, putting the clock back in Europe a generation in terms of material progress alone. And it is a possibility so great as to be almost a certainty that, as King Leopold says, “ war would bring economic collapse everywhere.” Neither Germany nor her halfhearted allies, neither the nervous little nations clustering in the Balkans, nor the Powers of the Oslo group which desire only independence, neither the young countries far abroad, such as Australia and New Zealand, nor the wealthy democracies of Europe, could escape its direful economic consequences. It is, perhaps, idle to hope that a plea from Belgium, which knew the full sorrows of war within living memory, could change the mood of the leader of the Reich. He seems to conceive of Europe as a chequerboard, not as a vast domain in which the essential unit is the man, or woman or child who is content about trivial affairs, with a peaceful home, and is indifferent to territorial conquest as the central aspiration of a nation’s life. But it is right that if the Nazi leaders cannot be made to realise their obligation to humanity in this eleventh hour of crisis, then at least that their responsibility, if they declare for conflict, should be placed unmistakably before them. The signing of a pact at Moscow represents a very real triumph for Nazi diplomacy. None would deny that fact, albeit that this document to which two jealous dictatorships are placing their signatures has been written in distrust, and that in its articles it can be as binding only as the word of a leader who has already broken his pledges. But the appeal made by King Leopold at Brussels, which must fin'd its fervent echo in the hearts of the peoples of all nations to-day, is not concerned with diplomatic triumphs nor with restless, greedy fencing for advantage in the international sphere. It is a plea that mankind may be permitted to live in peace, each member of the human family reaping the benefit of his labours, enjoying the privileges which science has bestowed, striving for an extension of the advantages derived by him from a rich civilisation. It is a plea that any man who is not beyond the voice of reason should find it impossible to resist. It is with one man, and with one man alone, that the demand rests whether the appeal shall or shall not be spurned.