Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1939. WAR AGAINST AGGRESSION.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 September 1939, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1939. WAR AGAINST AGGRESSION.

JT is one bright feature of an otherwise inexpressibly tragic situation that Britain and France are wholly united in the consciousness of a good cause in the course they have now taken in declaring war on Germany. Vastly more is involved than the question of honouring the pledges made to Poland. Thinking people in the democracies and in many other countries besides are united as never before in a belief that liberty, justice and security can be re-established in the world only when the Nazi tyranny in Germany has been overthrown. It is in that belief that our own nation and others have acted. Ardently desiring peace, they have gone to war because they believe and know that in no other way can the foundations of justice and security be maintained and safeguarded.

Without doubt, confidence in the justice of their cause will enormously strengthen the democracies and their allies in the conflict now forced upon them by wanton German aggression.The question of war guilt is raised definitely in this conflict and raised only-to be determined in the minds of all reasonable human beings. The essential facts were epitomised by Mr. Chamberlain in a statement in the House of Commons reported on Saturday:—

Now that all the relevant documents are being made public (he said) we shall stand at the bar of history knowing that the responsibility for this terrible catastrophe lies on the shoulders of one man. The German Chancellor has not hesitated to plunge the world into misery to serve his own senseless ambitions.

The measure of responsibility that rests on the German people was also defined fairly by the British Prime Alinister.

We have no quarrel with the German people (he observed) except that they have allowed themselves to be governed by a Nazi Government. As long as that Government pursues the methods which it has so persistently followed during the last two years there will be no peace in Europe. We should merely pass from one crisis to another and see one country after another attacked by methods which have now become familiar to us with their sickening technique.

The whole terrible situation now developing takes its rise from the weak submission of the German people to the war-monger-ing gang of which Hitler is leader. Precisely in what degree authority is shared by Hiller and his immediate associates is uncertain, but that as a. group they bear the brand of war-guilt of the. deepest dye is not in question.

That a man of Hitler’s unbalanced mentality should be

alloAved to plunge the world into Avar is not more tragic than 1 fantastically absurd. Fond as the Fuehrer is of rolling the word culture on his tongue, his only visible and apparent aim is to convert the German nation into a vast military machine, to be used in crushing other nations into the dust. The wretched poverty of his outlook, which has been written large in the events of the last six years, inside Germany and in lands beyond her frontiers, is made manifest also in the distempered oration in Avhich he essayed, on a basis of false and invented charges, to justify the invasion of Poland.

It is doubtful, for example, if in all history any more deplorable example of inflated self-importance could he found than in what Hitler had Io say on the subject of sacrifice —

If I noAv demand every sacrifice from the German people, I have a right to do so (he affirmed). I myself am ready to make every conceivable sacrifice. There will be no shortage in Germany to which I myself Avill not submit.

To a true leader, any personal sacrifice he Avas called upon to make Avould count as nothing. Hitler’s astonishingly inflated vanity, hoAvever, enables him to perceive in such personal deprivations lie may incur something that balances, or more than balances, the misery, torment and death to which he proposes to doom untold legions of Germans and people of other nations.

Much as the German people have been betrayed and misled by lying propaganda and all the devices of totalitarian rule, it may be hoped that they are not wholly blind to the merits of the conflict now forced upon, the world. The truth must in some degree penetrate that the policy of the present German Government alone makes this conflict possible and that lor Hie people of Germany, not less than for those to whom they now stand opposed, complete and»final relief is to be obtained by the overthrow of the debased Nazi tyranny and hi no other wav.