GAME OF CHESS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 October 1939, Page 6

GAME OF CHESS

BETWEEN PEACE AND WAR HUMAN LIVES AS PAWNS. MILLIONS OF MEN PARALYSED BY STATE OF ALARM. More than twenty years ago Leon Trotzky, the now exiled and outlawed Bolshevik leader, conceived the idea of a state of affairs which would be neither peace nor war, states William Henry Chamberlain in an exchange. Heading the Soviet delegation which was negotiating peace with the representatives of the Central Powers, Trotzky found himself confronted with ultimative German demands for sweeping cessions of Russian territory. Military resistance was impossible. The Russian soldiers, in Lenin’s phrase, had voted for peace with their legs; great masses of them had simply gone home and no organised disciplined armed force remained. At the same time, Trotzky could not bring himself to sign an annexationist peace. So, with a melodramatic gesture, he declared the war at an end, but refused to sign the treaty. Trotzky’s tactics, which were based on the hope of a working-class revolution in Germany, failed. The Soviet Government, at the point of the bayonet, was compelled to sign still harder terms than those which had been originally proposed. SINGULAR TIMES.

Now, in another sense, Europe is in a state which could hardly be accurately described as either peace or war. The well-known Trench political commentator, Wladimir d’Ormesson, recently summed up the situation in the following vivid sentences: “We live in singular times, which are those neither of peace nor of war. Not of peace, because the activities of the axis Powers have forced a kind of semi-mobilisation on most of the European countries and lives of millions of men are paralysed by this state of alarm. Not of war, because matters have not yet become irreparable.” Viewed from Paris, what is going bn in Europe and in those continents which are linked up with Europe is a gigantic game of chess, with millions of human lives as pawns and vast Empires as stakes. In this twilight zone between peace and war every conceivable weapon, short of the actual employment of armed force, is being brought into play; partial military and naval mobilisations, demonstrative gestures of solidarity and antagonism, economic and financial pressure, all to an accompaniment of a drumfire/ of propaganda. ' WAR OF NERVES While there has still been no clash of arms, a “war of nerves,” a test of psychological endurance is already under way. A newcomer in Europe is struck by the prevalent assurance in German quarters that there will be no war. One’s impulse to interpret this as a hopeful sign is soon dampened by the realisation that Germany counts on future Munichs, on obtaining pretty much what it desires without fighting. The Germans are counting on their ability to drive wedges into the coalition which is assuming shape against them. They profess to believe that Poland will prove unequal to the financial strain of maintaining over a million men under arms indefinitely, that their combination of military power and barter agreements will prove more persuasive with the Balkan States than British and French subsidies, that in Britain and France, at the last moment, a disinclination to fight on an East European issue will appear. CONSIDERABLE PROPAGANDA. The war of propaganda is not, of course, a one-sided affair. The French state of permanent partial mobilisation, the British adoption of conscription, the British and French naval movements in the Mediterranean—these are all counter moves in this desperate game of world political chess. That such a game is in progress and that the pieces are not yet out of control are two considerations which may perhaps reasonably diminish the anxiety with which the average American looks at the European headlines in his daily newspaper, although long-term optimism would still seem unfortunately premature. For war is a tremendous risk, and this is just as true for the dictatorships as for the democracies, and is just as well realised by Hitler and Mussolini as by Chamberlain and Daladier, even though the controlled press of the dictatorships may not canvass the dangers of war with the freedom of newspapers in democratic countries. "’MANOEUVRING FOR POSITION. So there is far less likelihood than there was in 1914 of simply blundering into irretrievable conflict. There is a strong impulse for both groups of

Powers to prolong the period of manoeuvring for position, to make no move that cannot be recalled. One is very rash to risk predictions in an era of swift and violent change, when one's best information of today is set at naught by the surprises of tomorrow. But there seems to be a reasonable probability that Germany, if convinced that an attack on Poland would mean a general war, will not attack Poland, at least until more favourable circumstances arise. There are always points of less resistance to work on; Spain, perhaps, or Hungary, or Yugoslavia. The two greatest dangers of a slide toward war rather than peace in the present ambiguous and critical situation would seem to be a miscalculation by'one side of the other’s strength and determination and a conviction by one side that the other is gaining ground too fast in the present strained race of national endurance, in which morale, armaments, trade, finance, and economics all play their part.