ENDING AGGRESSION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 November 1939, Page 3

ENDING AGGRESSION

BRITAIN’S ESSENTIAL AIM. LORD ELTON ADVOCATES DEFINITION. i Lord Elton, one of the clearest thinkers in the small but. influential group of National Labour representatives in Parliament, discusses British war aims in a letter to “The Times.” Remarking on the apparent general agreement that the first aim is to “destroy Hitlerism," he asks if there are not. possibilities of a dangerous confusion. behind the apparent simplicity of this statement. "When we speak of destroying Hitlerism, do we mean that we are fighting until we can be certain that Germany abandons aggression? Or that we shall fight until there is no longer any Nazi Government in Germany? .... “Is there not much to be said for making it clear from the outset that our determination is to ensure that Germany shall abandon aggression, and not to compel her to instal a democratic Government? This would certainly be the most accurate interpretation of the careful definition of our war aims already made by the Prime Minister. No country has ever willingly accepted a Government which arrived ‘in the baggage of the Allies.'For the Germans to announce that they were fighting to compel us to accept a dictatorship would merely add to our devotion to democracy. And since we have already shown ourselves ready and willing to enter into alliance with dictatorships—Portugal. Turkey, and even for a while, Russia — it is surely clear that it is the aggressiveness. and not the despotic character, or even the moral obliquity, of the German system, against which we have taken up arms. Indeed, unless it is aggression against which we are fighting, it is difficult to see any logical justification for not fighting Russia, where tyranny is both as oppressive and as evil as in Germany, but in which aggression has not (it is to be hoped) been developed into such a fine art.”