PREPAREDNESS ESSENTIAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 December 1938, Page 7

PREPAREDNESS ESSENTIAL

COMMENT ON EUROPEAN SITUATION. Let us be candid about the Munich settlement says the '‘Spectator.’- The British and French Prime Ministers accepted the settlement which Herr Hitler demanded, not because it was honourable or just—it was neither but because they believed the alternative was war, and neither France nor Britain could protect its civil population against the appalling consequences of air attack by Germany. (There is no secret about that; certainly it is no secret to Herr Hitler or Marshal Goering, the strengths of the air forces and air defences of the different countries m Europe may not be known in detail, but the general position is P ei^ ct L familiar to all *e Cabinets.) Those conditions are not to be tolerated. Ex nenditure on armaments is a standing testimony to the folly and moral impotence of mankind, but it can at lea.t be claimed that defensive armaments -anti-aircraft guns and fighter aeroplanes and balloon barrages-and effective shelter for the civil population fall less under that condemnation than any others. Those armaments and that shelter we must have. If Germans ask, as they are asking, why we wan. them, the answer is plain—because we may be attacked by Germany, there is danger to our soil from no othercountry, and if once we can be convinced, by the adoption and proved execution of an equitable disarmament plan, that the danger from Germany has disappeared, we can with intense relief divert our resources to enterprises befitting rational men. Geimany, it may be said, contemplates no aggression against us. That is piobably true, though if Germany is ready to follow wherever Herr Hitler summons the future is unpredictable. But we may ,in spite of ourselves, find ourselves across Germany’s path. We are under pledge to stand by France, and Herr Hitler has declared France to be the eternal enemy. Germany s demand for colonies might be fortified by menace. Preparedness is manifestly essential.