A DRASTIC INDICTMENT

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3800, 26 August 1936, Page 3

A DRASTIC INDICTMENT

“Italy was spurred and forced fyy British policy to conquer the whole of the Ethiopian Empire,” writes Mr j. L. Garvin, in the “Observer,” “and to create a huge and formidable po sition between the whole of the upper valley of the Nile and the Red Sea route to India. But this vapt change to the unique disadvantage of the British Empire has been unnecessarily created by the unprecedented mismanagement of the British Government itself. Nothing else could have done it. This is a drastic indictment, but it rests on chapter and verse. In the public interest we cannot abate a word of it. The record is one that would not have been tolerated by Parliament and the country in any former generation. It is fatal to democracy to say that qo real responsibility rests to-day upon Ministers for the consequences of their acts; that a recital of their well meaning .is sufficient exculpation; and that when national and Imperial interests have been misjudged and mishandled no one is to be brought to book. There is not a single walk .of practical life except politics in which that plea of good intentions would be accepted as mitigation.”