MOVE BY BRITAIN PREDICTED

Southland Times, Issue 23610, 10 September 1938, Page 7

MOVE BY BRITAIN PREDICTED

Event Of Invasion Of Czechoslovakia

ECONOMIC PROBLEMS MAY IMPEL HITLER

(Special to The Times)

DUNEDIN, September 9.

“The people of Great Britain are working hard and the masses are quite unperturbed by rumours .of war, said Archdeacon L. G. Whitehead, who has returned to Dunedin from a holiday trip to Great Britain and the Continent. “I think there is no doubt that Mr Neville Chamberlain’s foreign policy is dictated largely by the fact that the people of England are opposed to any initiative on the part of their Government that might lead to war. On the whole, they don’t want to have anything to do with war.

“But I think that without a doubt England will go to war if Czechoslovakia is invaded,” said Archdeacon Whitehead. “The Sudeten German trouble is dependent on the stability of Herr Hitler’s position in Germany, and it is quite possible that his position will become acute in the coming winter. Those will be the circumstances that might drive him to war, as a big gamble. He would lose everything in any case, and he would stand to reestablish himself through a successful war. It would have to be a quick success, because from what I could gather Germany is in no state to stand a campaign of any length. She is experiencing practically war conditions already, as far as food is concerned.”

The people of England would have great sympathy with the improvement actually brought about in Germany by Herr Hitler but for his entirely senseless persecution of the Jews, Archdeacon Whitehead added. His attitude to the Jews appeared the average Englishman to have no rational foundation, as he found it impossible to believe that the evils denounced by Herr Hitler could really "be ascribed to Jews. Without doubt the British sense of fair play had been very seriously offended by this treatment of the Jewish people, which had done more than anything else towards making Herr Hitler unpopular.