DAY BY DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 17869, 15 November 1929, Page 6

DAY BY DAY.

The friendly reception of Mr Sherriff’s play, “ Journey's Britain End,’’ in Berlin at a and time when the British Germany, public is devouring Ger-

man soldiers’ accounts of their war experiences is truly notable, especially as it coincides with the settlement at The Hague of the political and financial questions outstanding from the Treaty of Versailles, says the London Sunday Times. We may infer without undue optimism that the peoples, no less than the Governments, are ready and willing to draw a veil over the unhappy years from 1914 to 1919 and to look forward to a future of friendly co-operation in the arts of peace. This does not and cannot imply forgetfulness of great deeds, still less any admission on either side that the war could have been avoided. But it does mean that normal men and women, here and in Germany, are now, prepared to leave the past to the historians and to renew the old friendly relations that subsisted for so long a period. If wc arc right in so interpreting tho interchange of literary and dramatic courtesies, it accords entirely with our national instincts. It has never been the English way to nurse old grudges. On the' contrary, we have always been quick to clasp our late enemies to our bosoms, as in the case of France after Waterloo. We have always regarded with mingled amusement and regret the peoples who cherish ancient and Imaginary animosities and are guided in the twentietli century by what they suppose to have happened in the sixteenth or the twelfth century, or earlier still. If we are not to break with this sound tradition, we shall look forward to closer co-operation with Germany and to the fuller devleopment of the Locarno spirit in European affairs.