The Timaru Herald MONDAY, AUGUST 24, 1936 BRITAIN FACES STERN REALITIES.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLII, Issue 20504, 24 August 1936, Page 6

The Timaru Herald MONDAY, AUGUST 24, 1936 BRITAIN FACES STERN REALITIES.

“As I travel in Europe,’’ declared Colonel Lindbergh, in a vigorous and courageous address at Fliers’ House, Aviation Berlin, before the cream of the Nazi Air Force, “I am more than ever impressed with the seriousness of the situation which confronts us. When I see that within a day or two damage can be done which no time can ever replace, I begin to realise we must look for a new type of security—security which is dynamic, not static. Security which rests in intelligence, not forts. Something of the same ideals have been enunciated by British leaders for many years, but with what result? The gallant Colonel’s utterance is voiced at a time when Governments, including the Imperial Government, have been turning back to old and all-too-well-tried ways of obtaining security in arms, and the old-fashioned diplomacy of “front’’ against front”: “Aviators,” Colonel Lindbergh said, “unlike the builders of the first dugout canoe, have lived to see their harmless wings of fabric turned into carriers of destruction —even more dangerous than the guns of a battleship. Aviation has created the most fundamental change in war. And in face of this momentous pronouncement every nation is strengthening its Air Force. British official wireless messages this morning indicate that work is to begin this week on a new aircraft factory at Kadford in Coventry, which is estimated to cost more than £500,000. There was a time when the expenditure of half a million on strengthening the nation’s aerial defences would have met the needs of the hour, but the news this morning shows that Britain is about to expend that very large sum on the construction of a single aircraft factory, for the manufacture of aircraft, ostensibly for defence purposes. Great Britain, on her part, has in the past staked not only her prestige but her actual safety on drastic reduction of armaments and reliance on that invisible influence —collective security that was to come out of Geneva to preserve the peace of the world. But, let the famous journal Lb Temps, explain the change. “For 12 years and more the theorists of wholehearted pacifism did their best to persuade the British people that disarmament would be in itself the foundation of perpetual peace. .... The decline of British power encouraged the more daring enterprises of Nazi Germany; it hastened the rapid decay of treaties which Great Britain was this very reason not ready to defend, and it gave a new Italy courage to settle her Abyssinian problem by force of arms to her own profit and in the face of British opposition. Notwithstanding Britain’s acceptance of the principles of collective security, Mr Baldwin, who is trusted by the nation, was forced by the sheer logic of changes in European policy to appeal to the nation to realise the danger of defencelessness in a rapidly arming world, and to tell the British Empire plainly what sacrifices the people must make for their own safety.