WORLD PROBLEMS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 June 1939, Page 5

WORLD PROBLEMS

BRITAIN’S IMMEDIATE TASK STATED BY LORD ' HALIFAX RESISTANCE TO AGGRESSION. i NEED OF NEW ATMOSPHERE FOR ADJUSTMENT. (British Offieinl Wireless.) (Received This Day. 10.12 a.m.) RUGBY, Juno 29. The Secretary of Slate for Foreign Affairs, Viscount Halifax, delivered before Hie Koval Institute of Inleriiational Affairs an important speech in which, as well as declaring the immediate purposes of British policy in vigorous and unmistakable terms, he entered info a detailed discussion of the number of problems fundamental to the reconstruction of an international order, including those issues of living space and expansion which are today raised as challenges by the totalitarian States. British policy, Lord Halifax made it clear, rests on twin foundations of purpose. One is a determination to resist force; the other is a recognition of the world’s desire to get on with the constructive work of the building up of peace. But today the threat of military force is holding the world to ransom, and therefore, he insisted, the immediate task for Britain was to resist aggression. Only in a different atmosphere, and if convinced that all nations really wanted .peaceful solutions, would it be possible to enter upon the discussion of the matters to which so much of his own speech was devoted. What was now fully and universally accepted in Britain, but might not even yet be as well understood elsewhere, was that in the event of further aggression the British were resolved to use at once the whole of their strength in fulfilment of their pledges to resist it. To that Lord Halifax returned more than once. GERMAN ANGER REPLY TO BRITISH NOTE. PIECE OF IMPUDENCE. BERLIN. Juno 29. Herr Hitler’s newspaper, the “Voelkischer Beobaehter," says: “The British Note makes no contribution to peace and merely justifies the cancellation of the Naval Treaty. Mr Chamberlain selected the twentieth anniversary of Versailles to reply to a memorandum received two months ago. Is Britain playing for time, as at Munich, or is she wishing to beat down Moscow’s demands by hinting at a possible understanding with Germany? “The Note’s last sentence is a piece of impudence. One looks vainly for a reply to the Fuehrer’s speech of April 28, in which he offered England the hand of peace. The Note merely denies the encirclement with meagre words to the contrary. The cardinal mistake is the attempt to reduce the Naval Treaty to a mere technical instrument for limiting naval armament. If this is Britain’s view, then Germany was cheated in 1935.”