The Evening Star FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1939. A PLAIN ISSUE.

Evening Star, Issue 23372, 15 September 1939, Page 8

The Evening Star FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1939. A PLAIN ISSUE.

Tee issue that underlies the war was expressed with admirable lucidity and vigour by His Excellency the GovernorGeneral (Lord Galway) in his address which was broadcast last night. His Excellency pointed out that the quarrel was not with the German people themselves, hut with a form of government which had tyrannised over them, and in particular with one man, Hitler, whose megalomania and ambition had brought about the war. In his historic speech announcing that war had commenced, Mr Chamberlain said: “Up to the very last it would have been possible to arrange a peaceful and honourable settlement between Germany and Poland, but Hitler would not have it. He had evidently made up his mind to attack Poland whatever happened, and although he now says he put forward reasonable proposals which were rejected by the Poles, that is not a true statement. These proposals have never been shown to the Poles nor to us, although they were announced in a German broadcast on Thursday. Hitler did not want to hear comment on them, but ordered his troops to cross the Polish frontier next morning. Hitler’s action shows convincingly that there is no chance of expecting this man ever to give up his practice of using force, in order to gain his will.” Speaking a few hours earlier, the British Prime Minister declared: “ The German Chancellor has not hesitated to plunge the world into misery to serve his own senseless ambitions. . .

If, after the struggle, we can reestablish in the world the rules of good faith and the renunciation of force, then even the sacrifices entailed upon us will find their fullest justification.” That is the issue in a nutshell. The Nazis’ High Command has boasted that all territory in Poland belonging to Germany before the Croat War is now again in German hands. But Germany never held any territory in Poland except what the Prussian rulers, in conjunction with (Russia and Austria, wrested from the Poles by the force and fraud of the eighteenth century Partitions. The Polish Corridor was not new, except in. name, when it was established by the Treaty of Versailles. Danzig was a Free City from 1807 to 1814. If past conquests made a claim to present possession the Kingdom of Italy, as the nearest existing representative of the ancient Roman power, would he entitled to rule Britain as well as Austria-Hungary and regions adjoining, with even some slices of Germany. It is a matter for Herr Hitler to think about. The Treaty of Versailles made good the injustice of the earlier Partitions, never attempted to be condoned by anyone except the Powers that profited by them, and that treaty cannot be torn up in its entirety for a dictator’s whim. It is no new thing that, in Mr Chamberlain’s phrase, the responsibility for the catastrophe which now confronts the world lies'on the shoulders of one man. When supreme crises have been produced it has been usually in that way, and it is no more than “ the old issue,” as Mr Kipling would have called it, that has occurred again. But there has never been a regime, built up round one man and aspiring to world domination, which has given such cause for universal loathing and detestation as this of Hitlerism. None, in modern times at least, has combined such crudity, darkness, vulgarity with such falseness, relentless cruelty, and lust of oppression. Herr Hitler had got back much which was taken from Germany by the treaty, though it has to be remembered that when-Germany had all which the Nazis have been demanding under the direction of the Kaiser and his panGermans she went to war. The Fuhrer’s first miscalculation was made when his demands on Poland were pushed to the extreme of war. He could not make a settlement when Mr Chamberlain was still urging it at the eleventh hour,, because he had then gone too far. That mistake has forced a very nasty, but a very necessary piece of scavenger work upon the Allied nations. No harm is desired to Germany, but Hitlerism must go, as Kaiserism was forced to go before it, and the world will be a cleaner place for its removal. Mr Thomas Mann, quoted in our columns yesterday, is only one of millions of Germans who see the issues precisely as the Allies do, and their co-operation will be most welcome when it can be given.