PUBLIC OPINION

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21185, 7 August 1940, Page 9

PUBLIC OPINION

As expressed by correspondents whose letters are welcome, but lor whose views we have no responsibility. Correspondents are requested to write in ink. It is essential that anonymous writers enclose their proper names as a guarantee of good faith. Unless this rule is complied with, their letters will not appear.

RUMANIA’S POSITION

(To the Editor) Sir, —The political, economic and above all the social environment of Rumania provide a paradise for Fifth Column activities. Unquestionably King Carol and his Government are anti-Nazi. However, Rumania’s neutrality is determined by external and especially internal factors. We find, relative again to environment, there are 1,400,000 Hungarians and half a million Ukrainians hostile to that environment. Here we have then, a happy hunting ground for both German and Russian propaganda. Add to this a further halfmillion disgruntled and hostile Bulgarians, plus a German minority of 700,000, and Rumania’s population is a mixture of pro-German, proRussian, pro-Fascist and pro-Brit-ish, hence she is forced to remain neutral, for self-preservation’s sake. So it is obvious that these factors which cause splits, antagonisms and strife within Rumanian prevent her entering the war on the side of the British Empire.—l am, etc., HARRY WOODRUFFE. Auckland, August 5.

UNITED STATES FIDDLING

(To the Editor) Sir, —As an indication of how some wide-awake Americans are thinking, will you publish the following letter written in an American journal by Atwood H. Townsend of New York? “Why are we Americans fiddling while Rome burns? Why are we squabbling about petty mistakes of the New Deal and minor rulings of the National Labour Board while our kind of life and our kind of people are being blasted off the map of Europe? Will we wake up to the danger that threatens us before it is too late? “If, betrayed by our indifference, the Allies are forced to surrender, what then? Certainly Hitler will seize their navies, their planes, their tanks, their guns. Certainly, as he has already done with his Czech and Polish captives, he will assign the men of France and England to toil in factories and on farms to produce slave-made goods for the conquest of world markets, or munitions for the enslavement of the United States, or both. Certainly Hitler would seize the British, French, Dutch and Belgian colonies in Africa and Asia without delay, allotting some of his

spoils to his fellow-gangsters. “Then what would the situation be? On one side, four heavily armed predatory powers dividing up and controlling the entire world, except the Americas. On this side, one power alone, immensely rich, potentially strong, practically defenceless.

“If you were Hitler, if you found yourself with your Allies dominating the entire world except the Americas, if just one hostile power remained to challenge your supremacy and to be an ever-present menace to your security, and if that single hostile power had practically no planes or tanks or guns but was desperately building them as fast as it could, what would you do about it? And how long would you wait? “That is why the only sensible thing to do for our own safety is to declare war at once and to wage il with all our might.”—l am, etc., BRAVO Hamilton, August 5.