RECOVERING THE INITIATIVE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 June 1939, Page 4

RECOVERING THE INITIATIVE

POSITION IN GREAT BRITAIN. I hope and believe that the time has at length come for the Western Powers to recover their initiative, writes Mr J. A. Spender, in the “Yorkshire Observer.” Britain is evidently on much stronger ground than last September. In the subsequently seven months France has had a remarkable recovery and British defensive armaments have greatly advanced. Hitler’s attack on a non-German people has roused the surrounding nations, especially Poland and Rumania, to a sense of their danger, and opened up strategic possibilities which were not then in sight. Not least, Mr Chamberlain’s patience in pursuing a policy of peace, though it has exposed him to the charge of being a dupe and a simpleton, has had a remarkable effect in Europe, and has convinced immense numbers —even in Germany and Italy—that if war comes it will not be his fault or the fault of Great Britain. Finally, if war had come last September, it would have been possible for Herr Hitler to represent it as an attempt by the Western nations to prevent 3.000,000 from rejoining their Fatherland, whereas if it came now it would obviously be the result of his aggression upon non-Germans.