APPEASEMENT OR WAR?

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 December 1938, Page 7

APPEASEMENT OR WAR?

BRITISH LIBERAL PARTY j DENIAL ABANDONMENT OF LEAGUE CONDEMNED. REASONS FOR MISTRUSTING GOVERNMENT. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY. December 19. Sir Archibald Sinclair, Opposition Liberal Leader, who followed the Premier in the House of Commons debate on Ihe Labour Party censure motion, discussed Mr Chamberlain’s suggestion that the only alternative to his policy was war. He said that the Liberals repudiated the doctrine of the inevitability of war. It was abandonment of the principles of the League Covenant which had brought Europe to the edge of war. What caused him to mistrust the Government, Sir Archibald continued, was the evidence in the Premier’s speeches that he had misconceived the whole problem so that he failed to see that the controversy was not between those who believed in the inevitability of war and those who did not, but between those who thought with Mr Chamberlain that peace would be secured by appeasing aggression with concessions and those who believed that one-sided concessions stimulated the invention of fresh grievances. Mr Lloyd George (Independent Liberal) also deprecated the tendency to represent the critics of the Government’s policy as advocates of war. The only question was which was the better method of achieving peace. He expressed doubt whether the Premiei was a match for the “astute, crafty and unscrupulous dictators” with whom he had to negotiate. Winding up the debate, Sir John Simon, Chancellor of the Exchequer, contended that nothing had happened since Munich to justify a reversal of the verdict of the House which then approved of the Government’s policy. He said that Mr Chamberlain had persisted in seeking peace when everybody else despaired. The general verdict of the world, was that he saved Europe from war. The censure motion was defeated by 340 votes to 143. PEACE DESIRED. STATEMENT BY GERMAN SPOKESMAN. By Telegraph—Press Association Copyright. BERLIN, December 19. A Government spokesman declared today that Germany favoured peace as much as Mr Chamberlain did. “No one in Germany thinks of attacking Britain,” he said. “We have agreements with France, Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. Bolshevism is the Public Enemy Number One, and the only thing we desire is to keep H out of Europe, and particularly out of the Mediterranean. ' “We will naturally defend ourselves when we are attacked or when people interfere in our domestic affairs.”