EFFECTS OF WAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 December 1941, Page 6

EFFECTS OF WAR

HARD ON LITTLE PEOPLE. War is hard on little people everywhere, asserts Anne O’Hare McCormick, writing in the “New York Times.” One cause of the moral breakdown that made it possible for Hitler to conquer Germany—to date his most important conquest—was the liquidation in the last war of the middle class—small business, home owners, the modestly “independent” people that form the core of strength in every society. When this class is dispossessed in the squeeze of war or revolution it pulls down with it the pillars of order and liberty on which its existence rests. In the same way, war is hard on little States. They can live only when the world is in equilibrium, the balance of forces stabilised by a general respect for law. Even then, even in peace, the independence of the weak is relative; since the last conflict the urge for collective security grew in the small countries because they recognised that in the conditions of modern life it was their one hope of survival. In war they are helpless. They cannot resist the blows of the strong and thereby uphold their right and title to their own territory.