HEDGEHOG ANALOGY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 January 1939, Page 8

HEDGEHOG ANALOGY

“Herr Hitler made a good-humour-ed comparison of his own country to a hedgehog,” said the Marquess of Crewe, speaking in the House of Lords. “He said, quite accurately, that the hedgehog is a pacific animal, that it is able to defend itself by its formidable armament of spines, and that if it did not' possess them it would become the prey of predatory animals- such as foxes and polecats, who would- see before long that the race of hedgehogs became extinct. But when you attempt to apply the analogy to international affairs, it seems to be somewnat different. Each highly-armed country declares itself to be an authentic hedgehog and nothing else, but all the time it has in its mind the feeling that some of the other hedgehogs in its immediate neighbourhood possess the magical faculty of, at short notice, turning themselves into polecats and therefore that they have to be regarded with suspicion and a safe distance has to be kept from them. So long as that belief exists, there is no hope that what everybody would like to see will happen —namely, that the spines of the hedgehog, from disuse, should diminish in number and finally fall off, and a system of general disarmament should grow up.”