AMERICA’S MORAL SUPPORT.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 April 1940, Page 4

AMERICA’S MORAL SUPPORT.

ENLIGHTENED people in till parts of Ihe world will agree J most heartily with President Roosevelt, in the statement made in his condemnation of the German invasion of Denmark and Norway, that : "If civilisation itself is to survive, powerful nations must- respect the rigid of small nations to their independence.” It, may be asked, however, whether the United States, to the end of the chapter, is to be content to visit only moral reprobation on deliberate and calculated violations of the conditions which are essential, as Mr Roosevelt has truly said, to the continued existence of civilisation.

All observers seem to be agreed that in the United Stales, overwhelming sympathy witli the Allies goes hand in hand with a determination io do everything that is humanly possible to keep out of the war. The justification for this determination. offered by American isolationist spokesmen is that it is not the business of the American people to take pari in European quarrels and that the United Stales is entitled Io seek to live at peace with all nations. As President Roosevelt has shown very clearly, however, it is not a quarrel of merely European scope that is now being fought out on Hie Western Front, in Scandinavia, on the high setts and elsewhere, tiermany and her partner Russia are committed to a policy wliich Air Roosevelt has declared to lie destructive of civilisation. Both these great totalitarian States have invaded small nations and trampled on their independence. Unless that policy is brought, to a hall, civilisation undoubtedly will be destroyed. The demand of the American isolationists that their connfry shall refuse Io allow itself to be embroiled or involved in European quarrels is thus entirely beside I lie point. What the people of the United Stales have Io determine is whelher t heir country is to take any pari in I he. defence of civilisation, or is Io stand aloof while lawless nations are attacking the foundations of civilisation* Il has been said that il the Allies were in danger of being defeated, the United Stales would enter the war in their support. That only means at best, however, that the Aineriean nation, with interests al least as great as those of any other nation in the defence of civilisation, is content that the whole burden of that defence should be borne bv others,