PRIMARY WAR AIM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 December 1939, Page 3

PRIMARY WAR AIM

SURRENDER TO DICTATES OF REASON.

This war will be won, sooner or later, by the surrender of the common people of Germany to the dictates of reason, and in stating British war aims it is vital to put forward only such objects as are likely to appeal to the better German mind, says Sir Ernest Benn in a letter to the “Times.” We have no other aim than to destroy Hitlerism, and no elaboration of that simple purpose should be permitted. We must refrain, for instance, from talking of dictators, for the German knows that we tried to make a bargain with the worst of dictators and that our Polish allies were living under a form of dictatorship themselves. Equally useless is it to emphasise the virtues of democratic government, for the Germans are not desirous of adopting our systeni. Freedom cannot be delivered Io order or called up at will, least of all can it be imported from abroad. Similarly the better German mind is quite unlikely to surrender to the idea of any sort of League of Nations. The Germans know better than some of your correspondents that, | apart from a few bad loans, Hitler is | the only tangible product of 15 years of international wirepulling at Geneva To win this war, and to make another war less likely, we need to say quite simply to the German people—Give us a Government which accepts the principle of negotiation as a substitute for force and which is composed of people whose bond is worth having.