Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, JUNE 14, 1938. MR EDEN’S WORD OF WARNING.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 June 1938, Page 6

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, JUNE 14, 1938. MR EDEN’S WORD OF WARNING.

JN his comparatively brief, though distinguished public

career, Mr Anthony Eden has shown as little inclination as any man to raise needless alarms. On that account in ’ itself the speech he made at Leamington at the end of last week is calculated to arrest attention and it has to be added that evidence tending visibly to support the uneasiness and concern he expressed on that occasion is written plainly across the face of contemporary Europe.

Of the outlook, at large, Mr Ec|en declared that optimism was’not justified and that:—

We can only avoid a catastrophe by a gigantic and united national effort, sufficient to show the nations still believing in power politics that force will not profit the user.

Even those who think that Mr Eden spoke in unduly gloomy terms will hardly find in the current course of events in Europe much’tending to support their belief.

Under the change made in its policy when Mr Eden left the Foreign . Office a few months ago, the British Cabinet has been attempting to establish a friendly understanding with the European dictatorships. The avowed aim in making that change was to promote appeasement and to remove the danger of war. There is a good deal today to suggest that the actual outcome of Britain’s new approach to European problems is that the dictatorships have been encouraged in their policy of aggression and that the general peace of Europe is more than ever insecure.

The ruling trend of events is defined plainly in several quarters today. In Spain, Italo-German aggression has continued entirely unchecked. The proceedings of the Non-Intervention Committee have been reduced more than ever to contempt and ridicule.

• General Franco’s defiant rejoinder to British protests regarding the bombing and sinking of British merchantmen presumably must be attributed to Italo-German prompting. The insurgent leader has the assurance to declare that the British ships in question have been carrying contraband of war. General Franco, however, is a rebel possessed of no standing under international law, while the Spanish Government is legally constituted and is entitled to import all the arms it chooses. If the relative standing of the opposed parties in Spain has been in any way altered, this has been brought about only by an exercise of brute force to. which Italy and Germany have contributed largely.

Not only late military developments in Spain, but the bombing of open towns and cities and of British ships in Spanish harbours must be classed as a new extension of aggression by the European dictatorships.

Further reason, if it were needed, for the concern expressed by Mr Eden at Leamington may be found in Germany’s increasingly truculent and menacing attitude towards Czechoslovakia.

If Germany under Nazi leadership had any thought of making common cause with Britain in a policy of appeasement, not the slightest diffiiculty need arise in securing the satisfaction of any legitimate grievances the Sudeten Germans are able to assert. Instead, however, of efforts for peaceful adjustment, we have the speech by Herr Rudolf Hess which was reported briefly in one of yesterday’s cablegrams—a speech which sums up as a bellicose threat of early German intervention in Czechoslovakia.

Herr Hess, who is deputy-leader of the Nazi Party, is perhaps the most trusted of all Hitler’s lieutenants and the least likely to make such threats as he uttered against Czechoslovakia without the full approval of his leader. It was predicted at least a year or two ago that Germany would stir up disorders in Czechoslovakia and then make these disorders a pretext for invading and subjugating that country, even though her action should entail general European war. The speech just made by Herr Hess is the most disturbing indication to date that the German Nazis are as determined as ever to pursue that programme.