Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 1940. AN AMERICAN MUCH ASTRAY.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 August 1940, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 1940. AN AMERICAN MUCH ASTRAY.

AS might have been expected, the speech by Colonel Lindbergh which was reported yesterday has been welcomed by the controlled Italian Press with warm approval and with an expression of optimistic hope, that isolationism will become stronger in the United States. Naturally the Nazi oligarchy and its mouthpieces will also applaud the speech, for Colonel Lindbergh spoke throughout as one who would be quite content to see Germany win the war and who is foolish enough to believe that in that event the United States need have nothing to fear. The noted American airman went, indeed, rather further than this. Several reported passages in his speech are hardly to be interpreted otherwise than as offering direct support to the Nazi bid for world domination. He urged the United States, for example, to “yearm tor defence” and also to take the leadership to peace. It is recognised and emphasised by Britain and her Allies that there can be no peace until Nazism has been overthrown decisively and finally. In the outlook of normally intelligent and unprejudiced human beings, peace with the Nazis is as unthinkable as peace with some foul and devastating disease. As Hitler’s latest speech bears witness, however, the Nazis are eager for a peace of accommodation with Britain—a peace in which they would have time and opportunity to digest their conquests and to prepare at leisure for further aggression. In urging his country at this juncture to take the leadership for peace,'Colonel Lindbergh, whether he sees it or not, is inviting the United States to assist the Nazis in their projects of barbaric conquest and devastation. Fortunately, as Colonel Lindbergh himself observed, his outlook towards Europe differs from that of most people in America. With their foremost leaders, a very large proportion of the people of the United States perceive clearly that the island fortress of Britain is their first line of defence. They know, as their Secretary for the Navy, Colonel Frank Knox, has said, that if Britain’s sea power were broken, the Atlantic would cease to be a barrier and would become an express highway for hostile forces. Most Americans are alive to the fact that their future security, as well as that of nations still free or fighting to re-establish their freedom in Europe, depends on the defeat and extirpation of Nazism. It would be difficult to conceive anything more grossly and brutally materialistic than Colonel Lindbergh’s ideas on the subject of treaty-making. We are often told (he said on that subject) that if Germany wins the war, co-operation will be impossible and treaties mere scraps of paper. I reply that co-operation is never impossible when there is sufficient gain on both sides, and treaties are seldom torn apart when they do not cover weak nations. I believe that we should rearm fully for the defence of America and never make the type of treaty which would lay us open to invasion if it were broken. But if we refuse to consider treaties with the dominant nation of Europe, regardless of who that may be, we remove all possibility of peace. This is an expression of faith in the sole efficacy of brute force worthy of Hitler himself. In the extent, to which Colonel Lindbergh’s recorded utterance is intelligible, it is a declaration of moral suicide. It is the utterance of one who has no conception of principles of right and justice in the affairs of nations, lie establishes in his own queerly contorted outlook, some sort of line of self-interest dividing America from Europe, but is able to perceive no line of demarcation between the nations which are fighting to re-establish justice and liberty for nations and for individuals and totalitarian regimes inspired only and solely by a barbaric lust for conquest, pillage and destruction. It is pleasant to turn from the desolating debasement of worthy human standards which Colonel Lindbergh is endeavouring to popularise to the authentic voice of America, finding expression in an increasing and extending determination to render all possible help to Britain and her Allies. On that course, the United States is now set firmly and it is altogether improbable that anything will induce or cause her to depart from it. Talk, like that of Colonel Lindbergh, about attempts “to draw the United States into the European war” is idle and fatuous. It is well understood that nothing else will induce the American people to enter the war than a perception of the vital necessity of acting in their own defence. Whether that necessity is to arise will be determined by the 'course of the war. It is already manifest to all save incurably prejudiced propagandists that if Britain were defeated, the people of the United States in no long time would find themselves fighting in a life and death struggle in defence of all they hold dear. As Colonel Knox has reminded his countrymen, Hitler and Mussolini “have already told us what they think of the Monroe Doctrine.” WASTE AT ITS WORST. SOMETHING has been heard of late about the need for the continued development of this country and organised efforts are being made also to salvage scrap and other materials hitherto wasted. Enterprise well and wisely directed on these lines has full claims to support, but meantime, as the report of the State Forest Service lately presented to Parliament bears witness, waste on a terrible scale —waste that is undermining our total national resources, is being allowed to proceed largely unchecked. Declaring that the fundamental causes of erosion in New Zealand have been fire and grazing, the report adds that it seems more necessary than ever that legislation dealing with the problem of fire prevention should be widened so far as State forests are concerned and extended to embrace other land tenures as well. In the meantime (it is added) constant appeal is being made to settlers to do all that is possible in protecting watershed bush against fire and overgrazing. The report points out that such a form of protection, if undertaken on a national scale, will secure the re-establishment of some type of vegetative cover and, in any event, is a necessary pre-requisite to any local attempts to control erosion by planting of any kind. In both Islands, within recent years, there have been some frightful examples of the devastation of valuable land on account of the destruction of protective cover on watersheds. Damage of a similar though less spectacular kind is proceeding, however, over a great part of the Dominion and the area of more or less gradual devastation is extending in the circumstances mentioned in the State Forest report. Calling a halt, by the institution of adequate measures of control, in this continuing process of devastation and waste is easily the most profitable enterprise to which this country could apply its resources. Probably it would not be difficult to show that loss on account of deterioration and damage to valuable land occurring in Ibis way would weigh heavily against, if it did not. outweigh, any benefits derived concurrently from the construction of costly development works. On the merits of the case—merits that, unfortunately, are largely disregarded—nothing is demanded more imperatively in New Zealand than action on a national scale to protect and maintain natural safeguards against erosion where these still exist and to replace them where replacement is practicable.