ERRORS OF VERSAILLES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 October 1941, Page 6

ERRORS OF VERSAILLES

BEARING ON EUROPE’S FUTURE. The charge against Hitler’s new order, says “The Times,” is not that it has made a large part of the Continent into a single economic unit, but that it has created this unit oh a basis not of free and equal co-operation, but of exploitation in the interests, and for the military purposes, of a single country. That some new order is an essential condition of the future peace and prosperity of Eurone few will be found to contest. The "danger is that revUlsioh from Hitler’s methods and achievements may, at the moment of his defeat, carry Us back into the anarchy of a Europe divided against herself by a multiplicity of strategic and economic frontiers, and tempt us to renew the cardinal errors of 1919. That danger can be averted ohly if we constantly remind ourselves of the lessons which the war has brought home to us. Another error of 1919 which is particularly present to bur minds today was the elimination of Russia from the settlement. Little foresight should have beeh needed to realise that a settlement of Eastern European affairs, made without regard to Russin interests and at a moment when Russia could not make her voice heard, was Unlikely to endure. That error at any rate will not be repeated. >