Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 1940. FEDERATION AND FREEDOM.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 July 1940, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 1940. FEDERATION AND FREEDOM.

ACCORDING to the London “Times,” the most important lesson which should be drawn from recent events is the bankruptcy of the principle of neutrality. Many British-people in the Motherland and overseas may be inclined to hold rather that the immediate and practical, necessity emphasised, by recent events is that of putting every ounce of power of which we are possessed into the scale for the defeat and destruction of Hitlerism. For the time being, all other things are secondary and subordinate to that overshadowing necessity. At the moment the principles which should govern the existence and conduct of small neutral nations in Europe are robbed of interest by the fact that so many of these nations have been reduced by brute force to slavery, while others, menaced by the same fate, are able to find no better method of seeking to avert it than that of humble submission. The latest example of a country reduced to the bitter extremity of having to yield to force against which it cannot hope to contend is Rumania. In company with the Balkan neighbours, Hungary and Bulgaria, who themselves lay claims to part of her territory, Rumania is at the mercy of totalitarian aggression. These three countries, and some others, obviously are in danger of becoming actually, or for practical purposes, provinces of one or other of the competing totalitarian dictatorships. Hopes of remedying this ghastly state of affairs depend primarily upon resolute and successful military effort by the British nation and by the exiled legionaries of nations that are no longer free.’ While nothing must be allowed to impair concentration upon the vital task of smashing aggression by force of arms, it is, of course, right that thought should be given also to the conditions in which liberty and justice may be re-established in the world. It is a matter of envisaging the goal towards which free nations and free men must fight their way. At- that larger and longer view, it is possible to agree with “The Times” that— The conception of a small national unit not strong enough for an active role in international politics, but enjoying all the prerogatives and responsibilities of sovereignty, has been rendered obsolete by modern armaments and the scope of modern warfare. The freedom of several of the national communities in Europe will need other defences and a broader foundation in the future. It may be agreed, too, that a broader economic organisation, as well as a new political order will be needed in a world of re-established democratic liberties. Peace would be worth little if it did not provide for safeguarding these liberties when they have been re-established. More and more the belief is taking hold of thinking men and women that the defeat of totalitarian aggression, to which as a nation and with our allies we are dedicated, will be negative and barren if it does not open the way to an international federation of free nations which will enable them to act in unity and concert against forces of evil. In its simplest expression, the lesson of late events in Europe and elsewhere is that the repression and extirpation of crime demands organised action between nations as well as within the boundaries of individual nations. No citizen of a civilised nation would dream of suggesting that it should be left to the individual to defend himself against criminals, by his own efforts or with the aid of casual hirelings. In our own nation and many others, conditions of this kind belong to a distant and receding past. Thus far, however, it has been and is standard practice in international affairs, chiefly at the insistence of little nations themselves, that the smallest nation, shall be left to cope as best it may with the most powerful criminal nation which cares to attack it, or shall be assisted only by way of voluntary and usually ineffective alliances. The results of this unintelligent failure of peaceful nations to organise and band together for their mutual protection are written large today in Europe, not to speak of what had already happened and is happening, in Africa and in Asia. The vital condition of the good peace for which we must strive through an ordeal of war as yet unmeasured is the establishment of the widest, possible federation of free and peaceful nations. Wlr.le European federation has its able and ardent advocates, some people hold that the federation of European democracies is an impracticable ideal. Whether these people are right or wrong, their conclusion is one of despair. An essential condition of the fid lire security of those nations of Europe which are or aspire to be free plainly is that they should unite at least in safeguarding their vita! political and economic interests. It is rather soon to assume that, with totalitarian aggression broken and overthrown, as it must he if democracy is to endure, an international organisation to safeguard liberty will fail to appeal at all (“vents to tin 1 more enlightened European neutrals, to Erance, redeemed from the bondage into which she has meantime been sold by traitors, and to the British Empire, as well, perhaps, as to the United States and some of the other republics of the Western Hemisphere.