SINISTER ILLUSION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 November 1939, Page 7

SINISTER ILLUSION

ISSUES CONFRONTING BRITAIN. Discussing the world issues by which Britain was confronted on the eve of war, Mr Harold Nicolson, M.P., writes: —Force is not enough. We British recognise, of course, that the vast machine of the National-Socialist. (Nazi) system has gathered such disastrous impetus that it would seem almost impossible to reverse, or even to divert or check, its course. We realise that to meet this danger we must arm ourselves by day and night. Yet we also realise that our essential strength is based, not upon steel or gunpowder, but upon those moral qualities which will enable our people to endure the ordeals which may come upon them. And it is for this reason that so many of us are asking ourselves this insistent question: "Are we absolutely in the right?" It is at this point that we reach the enigma which is baffling so many of us. "If war,” we ask ourselves, “is the greatest of all human evils, then surely no possible justification can exist even for a war of self-preservation." Yet even as we ask that question we know that were Britain to surrender to brute force then the very evil which we hate and dread would become triumphant through Europe. Africa and Asia. There are those who are able to persuade themselves that even this would be preferable to the destruction of our cities and our children and that they can avoid war by refusing to have anything to do with it. I fear this- is a.sinister illusion.