OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 148, 18 March 1939, Page 1 (Supplement)

OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Mr. Chamberlain’s Conviction.

"Peace could only be endangered by such a challenge as was envisaged by the President of the United States in his New Year message, namely, a demand to dominate the world by force. That would he a demand which as the President and 1 myself have already declared, the democracies mils; inevitably resist. But I cannot believe that any such challenge is intended, for the consequences of war for the peoples on either side would be so grave 'that no Government with their interests at heart would lightly embark upon them. .Moreover. I remain convinced that there are no differences, however serious, that cannot be solved without recourse to war by consultation and negotiation, as was laid down in the declaration signed by Herr Hitler ami myself at Munich.” —Mr Neville Chamberlain.

The Real Question. ‘ The real question,” asserts the "Manchester Guardian,” “is whether Germany is more likely to gain or to lose by backing Italy's present demands on France, The Nazi leaders must be well aware that there are limits to the concessions which can.be extracted from the democratic Powers by threats, and that to support Italy’s claims in this respect may lead to war. A war on behalf of Italy would hardly be popular with the German people. Herr Hitler said last night that if Italy has a war. Germany will be at her side. This was a loud-sounding declaration. Hit be could hnrdlv have said less, and he did not try to justify Italy's claims and certainly gave her no encouragement. On the bus's of this speech Signor Mussolini may ask for some shares in the Suez Canal and some concessions at Jibuti: but unless he Ims further •private assurance—which, of course, is quite probablelie can hardly ask for Tunis, Corsica, and Nice with the same irresponsible glee as the Italian deputies."

The Average Citizen and National

“The average citizen.” comments the “Yorkshire Post." "lias a deep distaste for national flag-waving, and cannot readily bring himself to answer the. challenge of totalitarian methods by adopting similar methods on his own account. It is not so much that he has lost faith in himself or in his country, but that he has never bad' to reveal his faith at all ostentatiously and hesitates now to throw off his reticent disguise. The overcoming of these anxieties, however—and they should be overcome —does not mean that the Englishman today should start talking loudly on what national service is going to mean for him. All he needs to do is to remember his national heritage, and those principles of democracy and freedom for which his country stands, and then quietly resolve that, without requiring Government regimentation to lead him there, the hour of danger shall find him, trained and ready, at his post." Question Nobody Likes.

“Germany and Italy live in time of peace,under the regime which all nations have to adopt in time of war.” writes Mr. Walter Lippmnnn, in the “New York Herald Tribune.” “And the question which confronts Britain and France is whether they can continue to play the game as if they were at peace and still meet the challenge of nations that are on a war basis. Nobody likes to face this question. A nation cannot have its cake and eat it, too. It cannot have the unity,‘the discipline, and the sacrifices that prevail when it is fighting for its national independence. and. at the same time, have all the liberties and luxuries that it enjoys when it is at peace and the world is normal. Men say: ‘Yes, this is true, all too true. But shall we surrender our liberties in order to preserve them?’ The answer, I think, is that there are times when a nation must surrender its liberties if it is to preserve them. Therefore, a people that loves freedom and understands it, and Is worthy of it, must, in the final test, be willing to accept discipline and sacrifice in order to maintain its independence. For while nations may be independent without being free, no people Is ever free if it is not independent.’’ Trivialities, “If a man stands, as I had the fortune to stand last summer on the brink of the Grand Canyon, and look down on the whole record of geological time set out as in diagram a mile high, seeing there the record of the labour of infinite ages before life came, in which a thousand years are but a day, watching the river in its eternal task of cutting through the archaean rock, he cannot but feel himself to be the insignificant creature of a moment, and bow his head before mysteries too great for him. What trivialities are engaging the attention of the Christian churches, and dividing them one from another! Is not this a natural reflection for anyone who passes from the contemplation of these infinities to consider the pettiness of our ephemeral interests? This sort of feeling obtains more widely than is thought in the modern world.”—Sir Cyril Norwood. Mineral Wealth is Power.

“The possession-of a wide variety of minerals, or free access to them in sufficient quantity, is now essential to the maintenance of our customary activities In peace time and desperately vital for measures of military defence. It is for this reason that Italy it making strenuous, but, as the sober mining engineer knows, necessarily vain, efforts to make the country selfcontained. Italy will never be able to meet her peace-time requirements from her own resources; her highly-develop-ed /mechanical industries must always be dependent on imported material, and, indeed, largely in the form of scrap. Nor will she ever get her required raw material from Northern Africa. Her mineral geographers know that, even if they are not. allowed to say so. The serious bearing on the question of military efficiency of the dependence of one nation on another is beginning to be recognized. One can detect its sobering influence on some nations alternating with venturous efforts toward territorial expansion. Britain and (he United Stales control about three-quarters of the world's mineral industries and .own about two-thirds of them. In this tbeie is revealed a lesson for both great branches of the English-speaking nations and a warning also to others.”— Sir Thomas Holland, Principal of Edinburgh University.

The Social Philosopher.

"The field for the social philosopher is wide; it calls out for the plough and the sowing. There is a growing readiness to answer the call. .. . There Is always in the British people a Healthy practical spirit which seeks to arrive at positive results, ami is not discouraged by obstacles. We confess to many faults, but Defeatism is not among them. We seldom find here — to quote George Meredith again—'the juvenile “shrug philosophy.” As thus: "What creatures we are, bin life is so"' We struggle on in spite of the difficulties that crowd around us. So, in international affairs, we shall still seek to establish the policy of -peaceful change,' and to restore 'hat collective discussion ami guidance which is a condition of Hie sane ordering of the world. In national affairs we shall still stand fast for our ' own ideals of freedom and justice. If we can succeed in the political sphere, then the strong moral forces innate tn the people will bring othei’i things of value after —in religion, art and letters, in social conditions also, in all the elements that make a worthy civilization, so that these two troubled post-war decades may be followed by a third that is better.”-Viscount Samuel at the British Institute of Philosophy.

Same Thing Changed. •’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. Totfay we are confronted with a variant of that ambition.’’ ' Not the Crowd, but the Faces.

“It is a common fallacy to treat peoples—the people, for example, of a nation—as an undifferentiated mass,” says Dr. Rufus M. Jones, one of the world’s best-known Quakers. ‘‘They are taken in the lump, so to speak,'and are judged and condemned, especially in time of war, under a blanket term, usually an offensive term. In all such situations we fail to see the concrete human faces, the individual persons, with their throbbing human hearts and their unique ways of life and thought. Their inner attitudes of mind and will are overlooked and swamped in the abstract mass. Those human faces, nevertheless, continue to peer out from behind the abstract phrases. They are there palpitatingly real, in spite of the almost universal tendency to forget them, to overlook them. The same thing is true of areas of bate an (I bitterness and fear, and there are just now many such areas on this planet of ours. It is usually assumed, where there is an atmosphere, a climate, of racial hate and bitterness that it envelops the entire people concerned, and that they can all be ‘lumped’ together under one rubric of hate or fear, with no free individuals, whose human faces stand out uniquely in the general ‘mass.’ That is another instance of this common fallacy—to ignore the human faces that are always there.” The Visit to Rome. “It would have been very pleasant Indeed,” asserts the “Birmingham Post.” "if Mr. Chamberlain could have brought back from Rome a modification of Italian claims, unreasonable claims, at both ends of North Africa. But it would have been a miracle. To be frank, it would have been a catastrophe if Mr. Chamberlain, in the hope of bringing back such corollaries of Munich, had made Rome (so to say) another Munich. Clearly, he has done nothing of the sort. The nation’s attitude to .Spain has been reasserted, negatively if not positively. The nation's close and direct contact with France has certainly been reasserted positively. British interests, which matter almost as much to the world us to the British Commonwealth, may well have been underlined. And the effect, critics will be tempted to say, has been to leave the world situation worse rather than better. There we disagree. If Mr. Chamberlain has had to repeat the fundamental conditions of Great Britain’s foreign policy, he has been able to do it in a friendly atmosphere—and to come away, after doing it. still in a friendly atmosphere. The Rome visit, obviously and directly, has brought our Prime Minister and Italy's Duee into closer contact. We suggest it has also brought British and Italian opinion into more friendly contact. A useful result for which nothing has been paid.’’, American Preparedness.

“President Roosevelt reminds his countrymen.” says the “Observer,” "that if took more than twelve months for them to play any effective part in the last war into which they entered. It needs no pointing out that the new time-factors by which the globe has been condensed forbid the hope of any similar respite on it future outbreak of hostilities. If the American people accept the Prcs'dent's assurance that they are relatively not much better prepared now than they were in 1917. their own reflection will do the rest. Not only have they a much increased stake today in all the material interests that war endangers, but events have impressed upon them the further-reaching implications of a conflict between force and civilization. Neither America’s traditions nor her aspirations can allow her Io meet in a defenceless condition the impact of that dread emergency. If she should decide to become the strongest air power in the world, it would be a service, not only to herself, but Io mankind.”