“GERMANY RAMPANT”

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 58, Issue 4190, 29 May 1939, Page 3

“GERMANY RAMPANT”

BRITAIN AS THE BOGEYMAN. “Official visits by British Prime Ministers to Germany have had some curious results,” writes Mr Ernest Hambloeh in his .book, “Germany Rampant.” “In 1878 Lord Beaconsfield unwittingly played Germany’s political game and brought back Peace and Honour. In 1938 Mr Neville Chamberlain’s policy and that of his predecessor left him no choice but to play Germany’s game, and all he could have brought back was Peace. He stayed a little longer, however, and brought back Peace—and a Scrap of Paper. “Well, thank God for peace! Let use eat and drink, for to-morrow we still have to solve the problems left over from yesterday. For Europe the problem of the new epoch is the social problem. Its peaceful solution has now become more difficult, because Germany’s ‘Drang nach Osten’ is stranger than ever. “Hitler is'headlined to-day as the Kaiser used to be before the 1914-18 war, the moustaches of both being a Godsend to caricaturists. In cold fact, however, neither man has been anything but a melodramatic incident in Teuton development. “The differences of time and conditions are obvious; but the underlying significance of Wilhelm 11, with his entourage of Eulenburgs and Bulows, and Hitler with his clique of Goerings and Goebbels, is that both Kaiser and Fuehrer are not prototypes but merely by-products of their generation.

“They typify the fundamental aspirations of the Teutonic race at different stages of its evolution. Those aspirations are domination by force and cajblpiept, but never by. co-opera-tion. Hohenzollern Lohengrins and Nazi Siegfrieds are not at home at the conference table. That is why we should not be misled into bringing-peace-offerings to the transitory rulers of a nation which has never been at pains to hide the fact that it considers war as its supreme destiny. “War will not be staved off merely because a British Government threatens to make British armaments ‘terrifying.’ All armaments are potentially terrifying, and British strength in that respect can to-day be only relative and never absolute. “At this stage of the world’s history we cannot hope to use our eventual strength in armaments as wc once used our Navy, as a bogeyman with which to frighten naughty continental children or ensure deferential osteon and coupon-payments on the part of nations overseas. Meanwhile our only known policy in recent years has been that ‘we do not want to burn our fingers’—a combination of Safety First with Business as Usual.

“It would be futile to under-esti-mate the damage done to British prestige the world over by Mr Neville Chamberlain’s so-called realistic view of the League of Nations, and not the least in those countries which are not members of it. The League represents both an idea and an ideal.

“Not only the United States, but dissenters like Germany and Italy and non-conformists like Brazil are fully aware of that, however much they may scoff at it. Indeed, their scoffing is the measure of their intimate feeling that they have been false to a trust. The British Government has long been universally recognised as one of the chief custodians of the ideals of the League, and no government can, with impunity, even appear to betray a principle. “The principle was precisely the one for which British statesmanship bad traditionally stood: the sanctity of the law as the bulwark of political freedom. It was the achievement of well-informed British policy for several centuries to make the furtherance of Great Britain’s material interests co-incide with the apparently disinterested defence of moral prin eiples in international relations.” Mr Hambloeh develops this theme in a timely book. “We can scarceiy hope to make good in the future,” he says, “if we do not cultivate friendships, in which the value we attach to moral principles outweighs the value we at least appear at attach to money.”