WAR NOT INEVITABLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 October 1938, Page 7

WAR NOT INEVITABLE

LORD BALDWIN’S EMPHATIC DECLARATION MR CHAMBERLAIN WARMLY PRAISED. “NO OTHER MAN COULD HAVE DONE IT." By Telegraph —Press Association. Copyright. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, October 4. In his maiden speech in the House of Lords, where the debate on the Munich agreement was continued today, Earl Baldwin paid a great tribute to Mr Chamberlain for his conduct of the recent negotiations to ensure peace. “When he took the decision to go to Berchtesgaden, there was nothing else on earth that he could have done,’’ he declared. “I thank God he was able to do it. I do not believe there was another man in this country who could have brought about or could have done what he did when he got into those discussions in Germany. It is an action for which his country owes him much.” Lord Baldwin went on to attack the fallacy of the doctrine of inevitable war. War was never inevitable. He described how last Wednesday he sat in the gallery of the House of Commons next to Lord Halifax while Mr Chamberlain was making his speech. “I do not believe there was any thought by anyone present,” he said, “but that war was inevitable. “My mind went back to that day in August, 1914, and I have never forgotten Sir Edward Grey’s face —the face of a man who looked as if he had been through hell—and I thought the skies were completely black. “The prayers of the nations had been ascending night and day, not only in this country, but in other countries, and no answer had come. In the middle of the speech Lord Halifax was handed a telegram and he showed it to me. It was the answer, the expected answer, to Mr Chamberlain’s appeal.

“It was just as if the finger of God had drawn a rainbow once more across the sky and ratified again His Covenant with the children of men. “The children of all nations,” Lord Baldwin concluded, “have their part to play now in these fleeting hours that are before us. May the rulers of all nations be guided with understanding and with knowledge.”