The Madness Spreads

Southland Times, Issue 23444, 26 February 1938, Page 6

The Madness Spreads

At the end of a week disturbed by a major crisis in European affairs and by a change of direction in Britain’s foreign policy (a change of method, if not of principle) it is not easy to find comfort in the cable news. As if to emphasize the uneasy condition of the world, yesterday’s messages included numerous references to warlike preparation. The Chief of the General Staff of Czechoslovakia has issued a statement which sounds a note of defiance. “The General Staff is aware of the possibility of war against the Republic without a formal declaration of war,” he said. “It is well prepared and will not be taken by surprise. The standard of the army, the defence works and the armament industry is highly perfected.” And while the Czechs cast a stern eye towards the hills which rise like a natural fortress upon the German, frontier of ancient Bohemia the Senate Secret Defence Committee of France, comprised of air, navy and army committees, was meeting in Paris for the first time since the Great War. Nor has Germany been idle. “The Minister of War,” said a cable message yesterday, “told foreign military attaches .... that Germany was rearming at high speed and would continue to rearm until she was in a position to defend fully her entire territory.” Since words no longer have their older meanings in the idioms of totalitarian States it is interesting—in the chilled manner of those who take their pleasure with murder fiction—to speculate on the implications of this statement. The Japanese talk of “defence” while they are busily engaged a few hundred miles from home, and the Germans have shown a similar tendency to confuse the issues of peace and war. .Could it be pos-

sible, too, that a reference to Germany’s “entire territory takes in those scattered places where German minorities are expected to respond to the rising tide of pan-Germanism? Something of this kind is probably the fixed opinion of Marshal Voroshilov, who spoke a few days ago of pouring poison gas on the, heads of invaders “by the pailful”—a phrase which summons strange images to a mind which pauses over the thought of Russia’s long frontiers. According to a message printed this .morning he has announced the execution of “spies and traitors”, and believes, with the baffling naivete of the Russian, that there is nothing like a reign of terror for strengthening the armed forces. The far south is also in the mood for preparation. It was reported yesterday that the Commonwealth Government of Australia “is considering building another cruiser, possibly two, of the battleship type.” And finally, from the humid east there coipes word that Burma is joining the line-up of armed peoples. “Over £1,500,000 sterling, representing 14 per cent, of Burma’s ordinary revenue under the new constitution, has been earmarked for defence in the 1938-39 Budget.” At this point it becomes necessary to pause and wonder if the world has not now arrived at that stage in its collective dementia where a sudden insight into the absurdity of the widespread forging of weapons could not serve as a first step towards a more wholesome mental condition. If only the nations would escape from the hypnotic control of dictatorships and have one lucid moment they must surely recover that sense of humour which their leaders seem to have denounced as “decadent.” And then, perhaps, as the rich comedy which so often lurks in the shadow of incipient tragedy were revealed to them, there might come Macaulay’s “universal shout of laughter”, shaking governments from their foundations and convulsing the armed forces now meekly assembled for destruction. But such moments come only to those who dream of private utopias. The world reels on towards a new age of violence, and it is almost too late to laugh.