NEUTRAL STATUS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 July 1940, Page 5

NEUTRAL STATUS

CONCEPTIONS RENDERED OBSOLETE CREATION OF NEW TIES ESSENTIAL. VIEWS OF LONDON “TIMES.” (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, July 1. The most important lesson which “The Times” considers should be drawn from recent events is the bankruptcy of the principle of neutrality. “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,” says “The Times.” The freedom of several of the national communities of Europe will need other defences and a broader foundation in future. “Economics reinforce the same lesson. Europe can no longer afford a multiplicity of economic units each maintaining its independent economic system behind a barbed-wire entanglement or tariffs, quotas, exchange restrictions. and barter agreements.

“Probably the grevest error of the last peace settlement was that in encouraged disintegration at a time when integration was already a crying need. The new order in Europe must seek to create new ties, not dissolve old ones; build, not break up.” “The Times” condemns any idea by which diversity of people would bo ironed out in Hie new Europe into a standard pattern of disciplined uniformity. but says the present tendencies of laissez fairc are as obsolete in international as in domestic politics. Some measure of pooled resources and centralised control is necessary for the survival, of European civilisation.