NONE KEPT

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20040, 12 September 1939, Page 5

NONE KEPT

HITLER PROMISES LONDON REMINDER PLEDGES TO OTHER STATES OWN PEOPLE MISLED POLICY OF VIOLENCE PATH OF DISHONOUR (Elec. Tel. Copyright—United Press Assn.) (Britiiih Official Wireless.) Reed. Noon RUGBY, .Sept. 11. A bulletin issued by the Ministry of Information states: —

“Official circles consider Marshal Goering’s speech revealed the bankruptcy of the German policy. Herr. Hitler has made many promises to foreign countries, but none had been-kept, and therefore it is not surprising that no confidence is placed in any assurance he may give and Britain is justified in requiring that peace should be concluded with a German Government whose word may be trusted.

“The German Government also has misled the German people, who were promised ‘peace and honour.’ They have not got peace because the German Government deliberately pursues a policy of violence, which made war inevitable. They have not _2°t honour because the world recognises the crudity and falseness of the German Government’s charges against Poland. The ‘sickening technique,’ as the Prime Minister, Mr. Neville Chamberlain, has called it, has become too familiar. “There is no country in Europe which does not regard the present German Government as pursuing a dishonourable poli"v. which is a menace to the security and independence of all Return to Decency “Britain is fighting for a return to decency in international relations. Until this is achieved no country is safe. Germany may say she has no aims in the west, but the tale of limited German territorial ambitions has been told too often to inspire the slightest confidence.

“Britain does not desire anbther Versailles, as Marshal Goering falsely alleges, nor the collapse of Germany, but a just and enduring peace with any honourable German Government.”

The Daily Telegraph, commenting editorially Marshal Goering’s speech, says: “When the German armies violated Belgium in 1914 their leaders counted on a short war. Marshal Gbering has told the unfortunate German people that Herr Hitlers campaign for the destruction of Poland will not last more than four weeks. That boast was given a withering answer in the hour it was uttered by the announcement by the British War Cabinet that its policy was being framed and plans made for a war which may last three years or longer.

Only the Beginning

“Whatever successes Herr Hitler's Derfidy and desperate haste may win in Poland—and the wild exaggerations with which Marshal Goering thinks it necessary to advertise them., suggest an uncomfortable disappointment—all the world now knows that it will be only the beginning of a struggle to which Nazism has challenged civilisation and into which the British will throw all their strength.”

The significance of the War Cabinet’s decision to prepare for three years or more of war continues to engage the attention of the newspapers. To The Times it appears as meaning “that in the first place the Nazi political strategy has wholly failed.” ,

“This strategy, of which traces appeared in Marshal Goering’s clumsy and rather uneasy broadcast on Saturday,” continued The Times, “aimed at gulling the western Powers into a dishonourable peace after' the consummation. of the crime against Poland.

“But Nazi Germany in 1939 has been guilty of the same blunder as the Kaiser’s Germany in 1914. In the words of the late Lord Oxford, ‘the capital blunder’ of the Germans then was to ask themselves ‘could any nation, least of all the cold, calculating, phlegmatic, egotistic British ■nation, embark upon a costly and bloody contest from which it had nothing in the way of profit to expect?’

“They forgot we had something at stake which cannot be translated into what one of our poets called ‘the lore of nicely calculated less or more.’ “They have f orgotten. it again, and by the same vishful thinking have

‘given the same answer to the same misguided question.” The Times also makes the point “that the prudent but not. pessimistic decision means that the plans prepared for organising a national effort during the war will be put into operation complete and without delay. It is no exaggeration to say that on a comparison with 1914 these plans have advanced our readiness for war by between one and two years.”