Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1939. THE REALITIES OF WAR.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 September 1939, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1939. THE REALITIES OF WAR.

ONE of yesterday’s cablegrams reported that tli6 Danish 0 newspaper “Politiken,” in commenting on the conflict, drew attention to “the general lack of wai ent husn s „ ■md hate” and said: “Something unreal hangs over it all. The situation is by no means as confused as observations mio'ht surest The only fault to be found with the lemaik about a “eneral lack of war enthusiasm and hate is that it is ndher a negative statement of the facts. Our own na ion and others now at war with Germany desired nothing less than wai and have gone to war only because they felt that in no other way could they defend and uphold all that is best in civilisat .

Tn British countries, at all events, the sentiment entertained even towards the aggressive tyranny of which 1 litlei is , U head and front is hardly one of hate. Hitlei anil t for which he stands are regarded simply as r some . tl which must be extirpated before men can live at peace a o a . We do not hate disease, but all enlightened efforts are concentrated and directed as a matter of course to its eradication. It is from much the same standpoint that Hitler and Ins cieed are regarded by all who desire that freedom and justice should rule in human affairs.

An element of .justification for the comments of the “Politiken” appears in the fact that the .British people, o example certainly do not hate the German people.. It may be believed, too, that in spite of all that Nazi propaganda has accomplished, hatred of the British people is by ™ J l *?™ common in Germany. Hatred of one people by )Lit exists at all, is but a minor factor m the conflict that has opened in Europe. As the British Prime Minister has said, we have no quarrel with the German people except that they are supporting the Nazi Government and its so-called principles. Mr. Chamberlain summed up the position in a passage of his broadcast address to the German people on Sunday night when he said: —

In this war we are not fighting against you German people, for whom we have no bitter feeling, but against the tyrannous and forsworn regime which has betrayed not only its own people but the whole of Western civilisation and all that you and we hold dear.

Happilv there are positive signs that the simple truth thus stated bv the British Prime Minister is at least beginning to be appreciated bv the German people. There have been occasional reports bv way of neighbouring neutral countries that (Termans are showing some disposition to challenge their Nazi taskmasters and a Paris message today refers to indications of serious disorders in several. German cities, including Stuttgart and Munich. Some significance thus attaches to the tact that the German Social Democratic Party, through jts .jointpresidents, Herren Otto Wells and Hans Vogel, has issued a manifesto in which it urges the German people to fight lor their freedom and get rid of Hitler, and declares that .—

The whole weight of guilt for this monstrous crime against humanity rest with Herr Hitler and his system, the final overthrow of which is a prerequisite to European peace and reorganisation.

Hitler and his fellow-gangsters will do all I hat I hey can to discredit the Social Democrats, whom they have made every •effort to trample into the dust, but it is by no means unlikely that the time is near at hand when the Social Democrats and other people of liberal views will bo called upon once again to undertake the rehabilitation of Germany.

When the Junker regime lay prostrate at. the end of the Great War, it fell to the Social Democrats to constitute the Weimar Republic. With happier fortune, and had a more judicious policy been adopted at the lime by the victorious Allies Germany might then have been restored to a position in which she would have found it wholly to her advantage to collaborate peacefully with other nations. [Jnlortu.nately the Social Democrats made poor use of the opportunity by which they were then faced. As that well-known American correspondent Ed»ar Mowrer, has written: “Just why Ebert should have ima-’ined it to be the duty of the President of the German Republic to do anything but suppress the reactionaries, the oenerals and the former sovereigns, is one of those mysteries That lie so thick around the Republic’s decline.” It may be hoped however, that Germans of liberal inclination, as well as other people, have learned something in the hard school 01. experience and that, the day is coming when I hey will be able to deal faithfully with the Hitlerian tyranny.

Mr. Chamberlain and other leaders of the democracies in anv ease are showing sound sense and a practical grasp of essential realities-in drawing the sharpest possible distinction between the Hitler regime and the German nation. The present conflict is final and convincing proof of the extent, to which the German people are meantime enslaved under a vile tyranny. The alleged grievances on Hie strength of which Hitler has plunged "Europe into war either are pure fabrications or matter nothing to the people he has deluded so grossly. The German nation has but Io rid itself of a frightful incubus to open the way at once to European peace and to international co-operation.