NO WAR PARTY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 February 1939, Page 5

NO WAR PARTY

LORI) HALIFAX ON BRITISH OUTLOOK PEACE DESIRES NOT DUE TO WEAKNESS. ENORMOUS MORAL & MATERIAL RESOURCES. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, February 23. In the course of his speech in the House of Lords (reported yesterday) the Foreign Secretary, Viscount Halifax, referred to suggestions which he had seen been made abroad that if the British Government stood for peace there were others in England who stood for war and that that fact justified suspicions regarding the purpose of British rearmament. “I should have thought,” declared Lord Halifax amid cheers, “that everyone must have recognised that there is no war;party in this country. There is no party or statesman who would for one moment contemplate an aggressive war or who would get any support for such a policy. To hold such ideas shows that such people are singularly ignorant of the British nation.” There was another diametrically opposed idea which had a certain currency in some quarters abroad and which interpreted the British love of peace as a sign of weakness. That was as completely uninformed as the other. “Let them make no mistake,” said Lord Halifax, “the material and moral resources of Britain are enormous, and the spirit of our people has in no way altered. We do not desire a test of strength, for we believe that wars unsettle more than they ever settle and that there are no questions which given goodwill, cannot be brought to a solution by discussion. “But should a test ever be forced upon us our people will be found today not less tenacious in defence of their liberty than they have even been.”