DR. INGE'S PROPHECIES.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 98, 12 May 1937, Page 4

DR. INGE'S PROPHECIES.

There 4re one or two prophecies which I shall be rash enough to make, says Dr. W. E. Inge in his new book, ''A Rustio Moralist." The opinion on the Continent is that we are approaching a new ind terrible European wax. I do not beHeve it. The conditions are quite unlilte those of 1914. Then all the great nations wero rich; their credit stood high. . , Although the cost of the war far, surpassed all expeetations, they found it possible to finance it by borrowing. But most of the war debts were repudiated, so that in future no one will look on war loan as an investment. We are often told that a nation can always pay its aoldiers as it goes along. I do not believe it. I do not believo that either Germany or Italy could finance a great war. Germany is in such a pligfct finantially that I have grave doubts whether the Hitler regime can last out the year, aud Italy is not in a much better case. Italian militarism seems to be merely a perverted romanticism like that which 9 brought Napoleon to his rain. A revival of the Mediterranean empire of ancient Rome is a fantastic dream. The condition for its realjsation does not exist. Nor could Germany attack Eussia, which would be aided by France, with any chance of Buccess. Eussia, which is moving cautiously in the direction of an industrial and peaaant republic, is more stable, both politically and financially, than Germany, where a declaration of war would release a huge volume of violent discontent against the existing regime. The German bayonets are not for use against France, still less against ourselves. The Germans are honestly afraid of the immense Eussian Army and of a Communist rising within their own borde.r.