Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1938. A CONTINUING CRISIS.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 October 1938, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1938. A CONTINUING CRISIS.

TN one way and another the idea persists that the recent, agreement at Munich is very far from having introduced a period of peaceful calm in Europe, hut is more correctly to be regarded as marking a stage m a continuing crisis. Mr Anthony Eden, who has to his credit, loyal, and untiring efforts to build up. and strengthen the League of Nations and establish firm foundations ot world peace, was reported yesterday as declaring that the need existed for united national endeavour on a scale never beioie attempted in Britain in peace time.

This is followed by a broadcast address to America, reported today, in which Mr Winston Churchill appeals urgently for a union of the English-speaking peoples to avert war by confronting the dictatorships with an overwhelmingly ‘preponderant force. In their insistence on the o’ravity of the immediate outlook these utterances or Mr Eden and Mr Churchill carry the more weight since the need for intensified effort in British rearmament has been emphasised in the strongest terms by the British Prime Minister (Mr Neville Chamberlain) and those directly associated with him in the recent negotiations with Germany.

A considerable exercise of faith was needed from the outset to enable anyone to entertain a belief that the Munich agreement had ushered in an era of peace and security. After all, the immediate effect has been to undermine and break up a stout little dgmociatic nation in Central Europe, and directly and indirectly to open the way to a wide extension of the Nazi hegemony. Current news shows that the Czechs are engaged in negotiations which in all likelihood will make the remaining fragment of their country a controlled satellite of Nazi Germany, with its politics dictated from Berlin.

In all this there is little enough promise of peace, and certainly no such promise is to be found in the terms of the so-called German peace plan, mentioned m one ot yesterday’s cablegrams. With a German guarantee ot the French frontiers “and a declaration that the present British Empire conforms to German interests,” it was stated, the plan proposed: —•

Air limitation pacts between Britain and Germany and France and Germany; no pacts whatever with Russia, complete liberty of German action in Eastern Europe and the return to Germany (despite the declaration about the British Empire) of her former colonies at present mandated to Britain and h rance.

Should they be presented, these proposals evidently would be erroneously labelled if they were called a peace plan. They might better be called a plan by Germany to extend world conquest by convenient stages.' It is not difficult to. imagine the kind'of neighbour Germany would become to France and Britain if, with these countries standing'idly by, she succeeded in pursuing a career of conquest to the frontiers of Russia or beyond, them.

The question of Germany’s colonial claims, or demands, is not one on which it is easy to reach a fully definite conclusion. In a settled world'., with the nations co-operat-ing for peaceful ends, the question of colonial readjustments in” Africa and elsewhere obviously would be entitled to serious consideration. On the other hand, it seems very possible that concessions of any kind to Germany as she is at present governed may do much more harm than good where international relations, and also the welfare of native races, are concerned.

It certainly is most undesirable that Britain and France should yield to actual or implied German threats where the restoration of colonies is concerned. A determination not to be reduced to any such extremity no doubt accounts for their present concentration on rearmament, and for declarations like that of Mr Eden and Air Churchill that, an unexampled effort is demanded.

A great deal, of course, depends on the actual disposition and intentions of the Nazi dictatorship and it. has its significant bearing on the total position that the United States is seriously considering great armament increases, which, like those,of the European democracies, are occasioning misgivings in Germany. The reported intentions of the United States indicate plainly enough what is thought in that country of the peaceful professions of the Nazis.

There is no present prospect of the United States concerning itself from anything but a purely academic standpoint in questions of European settlement, but. the position is altogether different 'where Latin. American countries are concerned. The break in relations between Brazil and Germany, for example, is of the most immediate concern to the United States. It would not be surprising to find the American Government informing Germany in uncompromising terms that Nazi machinations of any kind against Latin American Staters will not be tolerated. No doubt it is with possibilities of this kind in view that the United States is preparing to make substantial additions to its armed forces.

It. would be too much to anticipate an early and effective response in the United Staites to Mr Churchill’s appeal, but much the same view evidently is taken by the American Government of the aims and outlook of the Nazi dictatorship as is forcing itself on the* European democracies.