TOPICS OF THE DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 126, Issue 21081, 6 April 1940, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY

Peace With Justice “The peace must be a just peace. It must do justice not only to the Germans’ victims, to the Czechs and the Poles, but to the Germans themselves. That means a peace which, if circumstances permit, can be negotiated with a liberal German Government; a peace which a fair-minded German admits in his heart to be fair, so fair that it cannot be successfully caricatured as a ‘second Versailles.’ Secondly —and this is even more important—it must be a peace which at least the great majority of the neutral peoples can approve. For it will need more for its maintenance than the strength and resolution of those peoples who are now fighting for freedom. It will be essentially related to the wider settlement which alone can make freedom safe; and no such settlement is conceivable without the co-operation of all the freedom-loving peoples of the world. The question of the character of the ultimate general settlement is a moral question. Constitutional machinery is of immense importance. It facilitates the operation of the common will. It confirms it in its purpose by the force of custom. But the will comes first. It is difficult to believe that the requisite moral strength will be lacking, when the time comes, in Britain.”—The Round Table.