TOPICS OF THE DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20784, 19 April 1939, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY

Ambitions in Europe

“There is no reason,” says the Aberdeen Press, “why nations with different political philosophies should not be on good terms with each other, provided all mind their own business. But, unfortunately, States which regiment their own populations aspire by a natural progression to regiment others, and, of course, whenever they seek to impress their boundaries outside their own boundaries they encounter resistance. There seems to be no end to the methods whereby this State and the other can be convinced of potential or imminent danger in the differences of neighbouring countries. Wars have been waged for generations and centuries on various pretexts. Some were territorial, and they were perhaps most sensible and understandable, specially in their earliest forms. Some were religious, and in them there crept in for the first time the ideological principle. Then there came the development of the French Revolution and of Napoleon’s early and greatest campaigns; they were fought to impose upon the world not a religion, but a political ideal, for there is. no doubt that for some years Napoleon sincerely believed that a United States of Europe under his direction could ensure perpetual peace and unprecedented progress. To-day we are confronted with a variant of that ambition.”