A CLEAR WARNING

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 58, Issue 4192, 2 June 1939, Page 3

A CLEAR WARNING

STRUGGLE FOR SECURITY. LORD ROTHERMERE’S VIEWS. Don’t underrate your enemy. That is neither patriotism nor bravery, but merely blind folly. If Britain, under Mr Ramsay MacDonald, had not blindly discounted the strength of Signor Mussolini and Herr Hitler, but had faced unpleasant facts as she is doing now, the world to-day would not be in such turmoil. That is the lesson that every reader will read in “Warnings and Predictions,” by Viscount Rothermere. The sub-title of the book is “The Inner History of England's Danger and Mr Chamberlain’s Fight for Security”; and it is a book that ought to be read by those who are interested in world affairs, irrespective of their politics. It is a masterful summary of European politics within the last ten years showing the price that Britain has had to pay for listening in earlier years to pacifists for a reduction of her armaments; and an inspiring message of confidence in the realistic policy of Mr Chamberlain. POWER OF AXIS. Lord Rothermere’s first warning is not to misjudge the ability and strength of either Hitler or Mussolini. He knows both of them. He has dined with them, talked with them, and understands something of their great driving personality. He believes that if “pinhead pacifists” had not deliberately underrated those men and their strength of character Britain would never have allowed her defences to become so weakened and. so ineffectual. Six years ago the popular Press of Britain was depicting Hitler as the Charlie Chaplin of international affairs “dismissing him as a clownish imitator of Signor Mussolini”; and still more recently he has been depicted as a coward, a madman, a megalomaniac, and a hater of England. Lord Rothermere classes such mass misrepresentation as criminal folly. In his opinion the popular belief that prevailed a few years ago that Hitler and Goering were clowns and megalomaniacs, and that Signor Mussolini was just a dramatic bluff, has been responsible in large measure for the world position to-day. It led to the imbecile belief that war could be prevented by pacifist gestures, but as Lord Rothermere wrote, six years ago: “You might just as well try to pacify a Bengal tiger by throwing kisses at it!” The “hysterical screamers” who were all for disarmament forgot that Hitler and Goering were patriots and capable soldiers, and not international clowns who would be deterred by mere words. Lord Rothermere knows Hitler to be simple, unaffected, and sincere in his opinions. He is “supremely intelligent," and the only other two men to whom he ever applied that phrase were Lord Northcliffe and Mr Lloyd George. Hitler believes implicitly that he has a mission to recover all the territory in Europe that belonged to Germany originally and to save Europe from Communism. Lord Rothermere says he has no desire to glorify Hitler but to show that he is a man of great culture and to emphasise that if there has been any certifiable lunacy anywhere in Europe it has been among those who steadily deprived themselves of arms as a preliminary to taunting with the greatest insults men who felt themselves deeply wronged. British people have ridiculed the suggestion that the starveling youth of Vienna could have become a man of culture. That surely ought to amaze nobody. “Who cares to recall the life-stories of the country lad from Stratford who held horses outside a London theatre for a livelihood, and of the starveling cadet at Brienne who became the master* of Europe and inspired the Code Napoleon.” Signor Mussolini is a man of different mould. He is not a mystic, but a realist, and he has created, in his country a new nature and has changed the entire spirit of the Italian people. What amazes Lord Rothermere most is that British people can forget all about the blood-bath of Moscow, and its cruelties and its terrorism and account these as little in comparison with a dose of castor oil at Rome or a concentration camp at Berlin. Until a couple of years ago the pacifists ridiculed Hitler as a clown; now they represent him as an ogre. Lord Rothermere would prefer to call him a miracle-maker, and miracles arc worked by faith. He has wrought the miracle of removing mountains of difficulty that barred the way to national recovery and he has given Germany a new soul. ACTS OF FOLLY.

Lord Rothermere says it was Britain’s refusal to face facts that led to the first international disaster, from which the world has never recovered. At the bidding of pacifists it tried to apply sanctions against Italy when it had not the strength to enforce its ruling. From that time the world has slipped from crisis to crisis. In the same way it was the sheer blind folly of the Government of Czechoslovakia that led to the overthrow of that country and its absorption within the Third Reich. As far back as August 30, 1927, after an examination of the position, Lord Rothermere wrote that if the Czech Government continued its flagrant in-

justice to the Sudeten Germans it would probably precipitate the world into war. And in September, 1938, that would have happened but for the statesmanship of Mr Chamberlain and the intervention of Signor Mussolini. Dr Benes, “the Pharoah of the Czechs, hardened his heart, and was engulfed in the Red Sea of Nazi Germany.” Without any realisation of the long years of provocation to Germany,, numbers of pugnacious pacifists wanted Britain to plunge into war to uphold the tyrannies of Czechoslovakia. They did not stop to consider the consequences. Japan would probably have joined forces with Germany, and as Britain was unprepared she could not then have challenged Japanese supremacy in the Pacific. Had Britain undertaken such a mad enterprise as War against the Axis Powers—and she would have done so but for the statesmanship of Mr Chamberlain—she would have lost Hong Kong at once; she would have had to fight desperately and disastrously to save Singapore and Ceylon, abandoning Australia and New Zealand to their own inadequate defences. That is the horror from which Chamberlain saved the Empire. For the last ten years Lord Rothermere has been fighting insistently for rearmament with a powerful air force, for, he says, he is for Britain first and every time. At last he is satisfied. Britain is once more a great Power. For 20 years the sentimental quasi-pacifists of Britain have been screaming about Liberty, but the time has come when they must be made to think about duty. REALISM AND ACTION. The reign of realism in British foreign policy, says Lord Rothermere, began with the Premiership of Mr Neville Chamberlain, who “beyond all doubt saved Europe from a devastating war in September, 1938, the mutual destructiveness of which imagination cannot measure.” Great Britain and the Empire, he says, are fortunate in having a statesman with his peculiar insight, his imperturbable calm, and his quiet courage, for although he is essentially a man of peace he would not hestitate to fight for Britain’s honour or freedom. He has completed . the rearmament of Britain, and “a strong Britain, anxious that the peace of the world shall not be broken, is the end to which his work is directed." “I say with all the emphasis that I can command” (writes Lord Rothermere) “that we are fortunate in having a man of the mould and character of Mr Chamberlain to carry the burden.”

Viscount Rothermere is, of course, a pronounced opponent of Communism, and his sympathies in that respect are decidedly with Signor Mussolini and Herr Hitler and with Japan in her Chinese adventure; but the value of his book lies in his sincere efforts to interpret the policies of Germany and Italy, which he understands perhaps better than any newspaper men in the Empire. Some years ago he was anxious to bring Britain into the Rome-Berlin axis, but as that was not practicable he set himself the task of using his energies to make Britain and the British Empire safe from attack.