“SENSE WITH SENSIBILITY”

Waipa Post, Volume 51, Issue 3645, 19 July 1935, Page 3

“SENSE WITH SENSIBILITY”

HERR HITLER AND MR BALDWIN. SECURITY AND GOOD-WILL. RESTORING BRITISH EQUALITY. THE AIR-WAY TO PEACE. (By J. L. Garvin in the London Observer.) Herr Hitler and Mr Baldwin have addressed all nations through their own, and between them they have opened the probability of a better era on a basis of good sense. It is many years since successive speeches of the same equal and fundamental significance were delivered by two worldleaders. For to that latter rank Mr Baldwin belongs, in view of the still more conspicuous authority to which he will return before long. As this journal was the first to announce weeks ago, he will presently become — without manoeuvring for it or seeking it, but rather despite his own serious reluctance —Prime Minister for the third time, and steering statesman of the British Empire. That is an office certainly not inferior in status and honour to any Dictatorship of them all; and there is no reason why it should not be wielded with equal power and efficiency as well as with moderating wisdom. The Unionist leader has won already a far wider degree of national confidence and support than his party-name implies. In every accent last week he spoke in advance, as all his hearers felt, with a full sense of his coming responsibility. You may talk of reading between the lines, but there is something more impressive, and that is hearing between the words. THE T,W;O GREAT SPEECHES. In difficult circumstances, following the Fuhrer at short notice, and having to give lucid yet discriminating exposition to two very different though connected themes, Mr Baldwin made one of the best as well as weightiest speeches he has ever uttered. It was not oratorical in form, yet the historic nature of its substance ensures that it will be remembered among the national documents which students in the future will always have to consider. His first task was to make a frank and sincere comment on the remarkable proclamation by the German leader the day before.

Mr Baldwin responded to all that was conciliatory and helpful in the Nazi Dictator’s manifesto with a thorough good-will which answers to the feeling of the vast majority of the British people. Herr Hitler’s speech must be re-read several times, and carefully considered in relation to German and neighbouring conditions, before its several purposes can be grasped. Like other Dictators and it is one of the incidental disadvantages of that formidable situation — when he speaks in public he is under some restrictions and compulsions unknown to democratic statesmen. For paramount reasons of domestic prestige and ascendancy, he cannot allow himself for a moment to abate a high tone; and, quite apart from matters of foreign policy, the whole internal system of every dictatorship has to rest on a military basis and cannot exist on any other.

THE FUHRER’S REASSURANCES

AND RESERVES.

In these circumstances we are bound to say that Herr Hitler’s speech was largely reassuring. He cannot withdraw publicly some things that he has said and written. In strengthening confidence in present peace and in its maintenance for a considerable period he stakes out moral claims for the future which it will be easier at some later period to discuss than to satisfy. He does not touch the very crux. He still does not see his way to guarantee against Nazi agitation the independence and integrity of Austria or Czecho-Slovakia, whose positions directly involve the far wider conditions of stability in all Eastern Europe. He did not do these desirable things because he could not do them. But the merits of the speech outweigh. Herr Hitler might have retorted passionately to the recent excommunication at Geneva. Instead, he replied with exemplary restraint. He spoke most earnestly in favour of abolishing or limiting some types of weapons, and of excluding civilian populations in a Red Cross spirit from the horrors of aerial attack. He repeated his devotion to the cause of peace in itself while reserving German claims to an undefined extent of territorial acquisition, including colonies. Eloquently he protested his desire to preserve European civilisation itself, which another European war would bring to the ruin and desolation of the Dark Ages. He reiterated his desire to end for ever the Franco-German vendetta of a thousand years; and to reach such adjustments with ourselves as shall prevent for all time a renewal of conflict between the British and the

German peoples. There is not a man or woman among us who does not say “ Amen ” to that.

BRITAIN’S FUNDAMENTAL

DUTY.

To every sentiment in the Fuhrer’s oration which makes for appeasement and hope, Mr Baldwin responded in a similar spirit. Then he turned to his other duty. Two tasks have to be pursued side by side. The first is that of diplomacy working to improve international relations in every respect and to devise by degrees pacific solutions. This means long labour before sure and lasting results of sufficient magnitude can be attained.

The second task is to preserve our due relative defence in all circumstances. That duty is as unescapable, immediate, and urgent as any single and vital business that ever lay straight before us in the whole of our history. As respects the decisive agency of all modern power, we have fallen into a predicament of feebleness unexampled since Saxon times. Without thoroughly remedying that immense error, we cannot possess among our equipped neighbours the elementary conditions of equal self-security; we cannot help decently, for al lour verbiage, to build up collective security; we cannot implement the existing treatyobligations we are sworn to fulfil; and we cannot wield the practical influence required for the success of constructive diplomacy. For what guiding and saving influence ever was or can be exercised by any great nation known to have become ineapable of independent defence ? And that and nothing else is our position now. The Nazi Reich, like all the States under dictatorship, is based by creed and system on Macht-politik—Power-politics —and cannot possibly be based on anything else. That is the very nature of the thing. Without hesitation and with epic vigour, the development of Germany’s armed organisation proceeds. It is futile and worse to recriminate on the subject. Rather let us note the practical results, and meet them so far as we are concerned by the concrete precautions. As we .said, it is. no question of Germany. It is the question of historic principle and common sanity. No more now than ever before can we run any risk whatever of lying at the mercy or discretion of any foreign Power.

A KEYSTONE OF CONFIDENCE—THE FRUSTRATION OF WAR.

Mr Baldwin showed how we have been reduced unawares to temporary incapacity for independent defence, and what resolute energy must now be employed to restore the foundations of the State. Without retrospective reproaches, what we have to do is to face things as they now are and put them right with as much vigour, expedition, and ability as in all our annals we have ever brought to bear. When the convertibility of civil flying and, with it, all the accessories and reserves of personnel and manufacture are reckoned, the Third Reich may be safely considered several times as strong as ourselves in the decisive form of power which over-rides fleets and armies. There may be some Ministers who would snatch again at any excuse for wavering and dallying with incorrigible belief in salvation by softsoap. It will not do. The Unionist leader must shortly become the National leader with an extended period of risk and anxiety to traverse before the present grave deficiency can be made good. Well might Mr Baldwin say: “ I would not remain for one moment in any Government which took less determined steps than we are taking today.”

The only'-question is whether the steps so determined in the treading promise swing enough in the stride. The military programme proper would seem to be another underestimate judged by number of craft, but there are other considerations. To supervise the manufacturing extensions required, the Government is calling in a masterly supervisor, Lord W'eir. Under him as Air Minister towards the close of the war, our Flying Force rose to its supremacy. As well as any man alive Lord Weir knows what extraordinary problems —the rapid obsolescence of types,©for instance, and a wastage of machines comparable with that of horses in the old days of massed cavalry—are involved in the technique of airpower.

And he knows something else—that without a far wider development of civil flying and national air-mind-edness the adequate means for expansion in emergency cannot be created and real parity canot exist. As no full Ministerial statement on the future of civil flying was made last Week, we postpone once more the comment which will have to be made; for it is certain that this great part of the subject will become a dominating interest of public discussion for reasons other than military.

But all these issues may now be calmly approached. The National Government under Mr Ramsay MacDonald has begun in earnest, and not a moment too soon, the work of restoring the practical guarantees of

British safety and influence in the world of to-day. That decision commands respect and increases confidence. It has already had a steadying 'effect throughout Europe. Wie go further. We are ourselves profoundly convinced that the plain inability of any one Power to Employ airattack without reciprocal risk of its own destruction will promote more effectively than any other motive yet seen the real restraint of armaments and the abolition of war among civilised peoples.