TWO-WAY ENCIRCLEMENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 August 1939, Page 9

TWO-WAY ENCIRCLEMENT

ACTION BY AXIS POWERS. The Gorman press, in assessing the probable outcome of a struggle between the A.xis and the Western Powers, has frequently claimed that, since General Franco’s victory in Spain. France would be under the necessity of lighting a war on three fronts, writes a correspondent in “The Times." This, it is argued, is one of the concrete advantages which Germany and Italy nave derived from their intervention on behalf of the Spanish Nationalists. It does not apparently occur to these German apologists that they are claiming to have successfully accomplished the “encirclement” of France. They equally ignore the fact that they are laying themselves open to the charge of pursuing a policy of "encirclement" when they claim that it is hopeless for the Pules to contemplate resistance to Germany since she established her sovereignty over the Memelland and secured control over Slovakia. And the dismemberment of Czecho-Slovakia last September was carried out by a policy of “encirclement" with the collaboration of Hungary and Poland. Nor are these isolated examples in'the history of Germany and of Europe. Encirclement has indeed frequently occurred. When the conquests of Napoleonic Franco threatened to destroy European liberties Russia. Prussia and Austria eventually joined with England to restrain her. The common danger called forth the inevitable response; the excesses of French nationalism had stimulated the national feelings of Englishmen. Russians, Spaniards, Germans and others.