THE NEW VIEW OF WAR

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 84, 20 November 1928, Page 3

THE NEW VIEW OF WAR

PAST BLUNDERING. "I suggest to the young men that they should drop generalisations and apply themselves seriously to the causes of war," says Mr. J. A. Spender, in the London Daily News. "They are convinced that tho 'old men' blundered, whether from malice or ignorance. Let them show us where the old men went astray, and how they themselves would have behaved if they had been governing the country. Suppose, in fact, one of our young men in charge of British policy in the first 14 years of the present century- What would ho have done when tho Germans began to build a big fleet and in spite of all warnings and efforts for a mutual cessation of building, persisted to a point which evidently threatened his country, if she remained isolated and without friends in cither of tho European alliances? Would he have said that militarism was such an evil thing that he would take no part in a naval competition and seek no friends to support him in case ho was attacked either by a superior enemy or by a. combination which he was unable to resist? Would he have remained a passive spectator while Germany crushed France, made herself master of Europe, with possession of the Channel ports, and (probably) added the fleets of tho conquered nations to her own fleetP Is he quite sure that if he had pursued this policy the young men of the present day would thank him?"