WAR AIMS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 October 1940, Page 5

WAR AIMS

BRITAIN’S OUTLOOK TODAY RETURN TO STATUS QUO REJECTED. HOME & EUROPEAN PROBLEMS. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, October 16. While appreciating the desire of the Prime Minister, Mr Churchill, in his statement on war aims in the House of Commons not to be drawn into a complicated outline of specific proposals dealing witli the post-war situation, the Press stresses the emphasis Mr Churchill laid on the fact that Britain is not fighting merely to maintain the status quo. “The Times” says: “In the last war there was a temptation to look back to the world of 1914 as a golden age and it was supposed that the restoration of this world would mean the return to an era of peace and prosperity. The present generation is. unlikely to think in these terms of the world of 1939. “This time the watchword cannot be the restoration of the status quo but the rebuilding of the very foundations of our social and international order. The assurance that Britain does not intend to wash its hands of a prostrate and devastated Europe and that British victory wfil bring with it not only the overthrow of their oppressors but the prompt relief of their distress is the essential element in the British message to Europe ,and the British answer to the plan of a new European, order made in Berlin and resting on the domination of a single Power. “The international problem is intimately connnected with social reconstruction in this country. It may well be that the right approach to the problem of international reconstruction will be through the avenue of reconstruction at home. Here there is no need to await the coming of victory to make a beginning. The war is not only confronting us with social problems which must be tackled at once but also is providing some conditions in which they can be met. There is no better propaganda for Britain abroad than the determination in the midst of our other preoccupations to meeet these problems in a new spirit.”