Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, AUGUST 15, 1941. AN INTERNATIONAL CHARTER.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 August 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, AUGUST 15, 1941. AN INTERNATIONAL CHARTER.

•JT may be hoped and believed that the joint declaration made by the British Prime Minister and Hie President oT the United States, as the outcome of their meeting at sea, is destined to take its place in history as a document marking the beginning of a. great forward stride in international relationships. The declaration, is momentous, not as setting before the world new and strange principles bearing on world order and the fate of humanity, bid as an announcement that the two great nations concerned will unite in seeking to apply to international relationships principles of law that are familiar and have been well tested in many centuries of human experience.

The declaration, seeks simply to apply to the affairs of nations the principles which are observed and enforced in the internal comity of any well-ordered nation. What is new and of commanding importance in the declaration is that it promises an application of these principles on the broadest scale.

An ineffective effort to Jay foundations of world order was made after the war of .1914-18 in the establishment of the League of Nations. The British Empire and the United .States are now committed by their leaders to a bolder and broader attempt to establish world order than was made in the establishment of the League of Nations. The attempt will be supported by all that is best in the nations immediately concerned and throughout the world.

In its promise of Anglo-American co-operation in world leadership, the joint declaration opens, al the largest view, a better ami brighter future for humanity. It may be hoped, too, that in its immediate effect it -will fortify and invigorate the mighty effort still needed to make an end of the debasement and defilement of totalitarian aggression in all the forms in which it has developed or is developing.

AIRMEN AND THEIR JOB.

CABLEGRAMS from London yesterday gave some interesting particulars of a visit paid by the Prime Minister (Mr Eraser) to a fighter squadron of the Royal New Zealand Air Force. There does not seem to have been a very enthusiastic response by the airmen to a suggestion by Mr Fraser that their experience would be very valuable if they returned to New Zealand. One officer asked if he would like to return to the Dominion is reported to have replied: “Yes, but I would like to see this season out.” Another reply was: “All the chaps here want to see this job through.”

No doubt this desire is natural as well as highly creditable, to the airmen by whom it was expressed. To those of them particularly who played their part in the Battle of Britain last year, victoriously but against numerical odds that might well have been overwhelming, it must be an immense satisfaction to have passed from the defensive to the offensive. In the days when they were outnumbered vastly, they gave signal proof of their superiority over the enemy in courage and in all-round quality. The numerical odds are now redressed and in their rapidly mounting strength the air squadrons of the Empire have an ample assurance of being able to make at least a contribution of commanding importance to the. winning of the war and perhaps a contribution in itself decisive.

It is one of the ironical features of this war that although Germany has overrun a great part of Europe, the almost. complete immunity from attack on her own territory she enjoyed in the last war is now replaced by conditions in which the realities of war are being impressed in ever more grim and deadly fashion on the people of the Reich. In their increasing volume and range, and with the Russians now striking in from the east against Berlin, air attacks on Germany seem likely at least to exercise an enormously important influence on the duration and outcome of the war.

With matters taking this course, it is not at all surprising that the ruling inclination of New Zealand airmen, numbers of them veterans with many victories standing to their credit, should be to “see this job through.” The one thing that no doubt would induce some of them to change their mind would be a direct attack, or the imminent possibility of such an attack, on their own country—a development by no means impossible as affairs are now shaping in the Pacific. Should the war extend to this part of the world, it may be taken for granted that some of the airmen of veteran experience who have acquitted themselves so valiantly in Western Europe and in Mediterranean, regions will be available to organise the defence by air of the land of their birth.