Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1939. AN OPENING FOUL BLOW.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 September 1939, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1939. AN OPENING FOUL BLOW.

fkN the in format ion meantime available, the torpedoing of the liner Athenia in the Atlantic, west of the Hebrides, by a German submarine, ranks in its nature with the worst examples of ruthlessness at sea of which Germany was guilty m the Great War. The ship thus attacked without.warning, in. defiance 01. the protocols to which Germany is a party with other nations, was a passenger liner proceeding westward to Canada, carrying homeward-bound Americans and Canadians, including a party of school girls. The ship could by no stretch of imagination have been supposed to be carrying munitions. The attac v was thus a deed of unrelieved and murderous lawlessness reports to hand at time of writing state that the only known loss oi lite on the Athenia was that caused by the explosion of the torpedo which sank her, but it is evidently not the fault of those by whom the attack was made that there was not a very much heavier loss of life.

As an indication of the methods which Nazi Germany proposes to adopt, this opening episode of the war at sea is as illuminating as it is shocking. It implies nothing less than that the German dictatorship intends to proceed to any extreme ot ferocious barbarity that may be open to it. The revelation will not only steel and quicken the war effort of the Allied nations, but may be expected profoundly to influence neutral opinion in the United States and elsewhere. It certainly is well calculated to shatter the assurance with which President Roosevelt has just declared his hope and belief that the United States will be able to stay out of this war. It is true that even in making that statement, Mr. Roosevelt embodied in it some qualifications.

This nation (he said) will remain a neutral nation, but I cannot ask that every American shall remain neutral in thought as well. Even a neutral has the right to take account of facts. Even a neutral cannot be asked to close his mind or conscience.

At the. moment, though not by the will of its President, the United States is committed to a policy of treating on even terms, in trading and otlujr economic affairs, the aggressor nations in Europe and the nations that arc resisting their aggression. That policy, it seems likely, will be modified in any case, but the people of the United States are already being invited in addition to determine whether they intend to submit tamely to murderous barbarity, directly threatening American lives, as has happened in the case of the Athenia. Some influential pnblic'men and others in the United States are of opinion that American citizens should meet the problem thus raised by staying at home and attending strictly to their own affairs. In the conditions of the modern world, however, that policy entails a humiliating abdication from normal rights which any nation expects to enjoy and exercise as a matter of course. It may be hoped that the full significance of the attack on the Athenia will be appreciated,in the United States. Tn honourable and interesting contrast to the deed of murderous barbarity in which Nazi Germany has engaged so speedily is the gallant enterprise of the Royal Air Force in making reconuaisance flights over Germany and dropping six million leaflets—leaflets in which no doubt an appeal is made to justice and reason. Against the tactics of false propaganda and deception of the German people on which the Nazi dictatorship so largely relies, the showering of the truth from the air conceivably may prove to be a tremendously formidable weapon in the hands of those who are fighting in the cause of human freedom, enlightenment and true progress.