The Wanganui Chronicle TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1938. IS IT PEACE?

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 240, 11 October 1938, Page 6

The Wanganui Chronicle TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1938. IS IT PEACE?

latest speech of Chancellor Hitler is ominous in what it says directly concerning the United Kingdom. There is expressed a desire on the part of Hitler for peace, but is it peace? Does not peace in his vocabulary mean his own way? The demands which havB been made on Czechoslovakia appear to be crushing and amount almost to an absorption of that country. While congratulations are rightly being bestowed upon Mr. Chamberlain for having averted war when war seemed to be inevitable, the situation in Europe is growing worse and worse. Hitler is in the dominant position in Europe to-day, and he is following up his advantage by intervening in British polities. He is endeavouring to divide the country, and it will be surprising indeed if there does not appear in Britain a pro-German party. The situation will require careful watching because very shortly further demands will be advanced by Hitler himself, and those demands will be addressed to Mr. Chamberlain. The residents of Tanganyika are already disturbed at the inability of their.representatives to secure Mr. Chamberlain’s promise that that colony will not be handed back to Germany should a demand therefor be made. The difficulty in the way of clarifying the situation lies in the desire of everyone to avoid open warfare. Realising this, Mr. Chamberlain is ready to acquiesce in a one-sided arrangement in Spain to the detriment of the legitimate Government on the excuse that a general conflict is being avoided; he is also ready to acquiesce in Czechoslovakia being dismembered piecemeal; he may be willing to go still further, and it is difficult to know where the line will be drawn. There is a growing feeling of uneasiness that the front is being taken apart piecemeal, not in the furtherance of peace, but merely in putting off the evil day. When that day comes the position may not. be as favourable for the United Kingdom as is the present time. Mr. Anthony Eden has been joined by Mr. Duff-Cooper, and the First Lord of the Admiralty cannot lightly be dismissed as one who is unaware of the whole circumstances. While the uneasiness is by no means groundless and the policy of Mr. Chamberlain cannot wholly be revealed, there is reason for 'withholding judgment, for there is at least one element in the situation which favours Mr. Chamberlain’s policy, and that is that peace of a sort is still with the world. The elements which go to make up the world situation are never static; they are shifting- in their strength, and it is in the alteration in the international stresses that peace is likely to be aided. This may be a slim hope, but that is the present situation, whether it be liked or not.

Again, it must be marked that neither France nor Russia, the two Powers chiefly concerned in the maintenance of the Republic of Czechoslovakia, have evinced any desire to take the initiative in the European scene to-day. Russia, had she opposed Germany, would have been fighting a defensive war in foreign territory, and yet she allowed the situation to go by default. France has forsaken her traditional policy of maintaining an ally on the other side of Germany, and there has come instead from French quarters of some influence the suggestion that it would be as well to allow Germany to expand toward the East in order to occupy her in that direction and thereby relieve the West from the Teutonic menace. This French “realism” may be callous, but it is in accord with the French temperament. These may be the compelling factors which have moved Mr. Chamberlain to continue in the policy which he has consistently followed. If they are, then Mr. Chamberlain has not chosen a policy to pursue, but has been compelled to take the one and only path which was open to him. This situation, if it be the real situation, may be very distasteful to the publie, but it would be more so to a responsible statesman because he would be playing a losing game from the start, a game in which Hitler is previously aware of all of the moves.