Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, MAY 12, 1943. FRANCO AS PEACEMAKER.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 May 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, MAY 12, 1943. FRANCO AS PEACEMAKER.

NOTHING could better illustrate and emphasise the extent to which the fortunes of Axis gangsterdom have ebbed than the spectacle of General Franco putting himself forward as, in his own expression, a voice calling for peace. If he wishes to be regarded as a lover of peace, General Franco will be constrained to admit that he has been strangely slow to awaken to his responsibilities in that capacity.

During years of war in which Germany and her satellites were murderously assailing and enslaving small European States and invading and laying -waste great areas of Russian territory, and the Luftwaffe was doing its utmost to blast Britain into submission, no word on behalf of peace was spoken by the man who, by similar methods and with powerful help from Germany and Italy, had been established as ruler of Spain. On one occasion at least, he indicated that circumstances might arise in which Spain would fake her stand with Germany in the war against Russia.

Now, however, General Franco is desirous of peace, and this for reasons that all. -who run may read. It would be crediting him with less than normal intelligence to suppose that he really believes, as he asserts, that the war is in danger of degenerating into a deadlock. It need not be doubted, however, that in a sense and to an extent he is unaffectedly sincere in his present advocacy. He genuinely desires some sort of compromise peace because he sees in it the only- alternative to final and overwhelming disaster for those to whom he owes allegiance and with whose fortunes his own probably are identified.

General Franco’s position has much in common with that of the puppet governments Germany has established throughout the Balkans, of whom it was said in a cablegram the other day that they “arc reading the signs on the Avail and realise that they are doomed.” The Spanish dictator could never have attained power had not German and Italian military help enabled him to overwhelm and destroy those of his countrymen who gave their lives freely in an effort to uphold legal and constitutional government in Spain.

In his advocacy of peace, General Franco is simply urging that the forces of evil to whom he owes his present elevation — if the position he holds can be so described —should not be destroyed. At the same time it probably may be read as an intimation to those who established him in poxver that he is no longer prepared to take any risks on their behalf. Whether he was or was not speaking in any degree as the mouthpiece of his Axis patrons, there is a sufficient, answer to all he has said

or can say in the demand of the United Nations for the unconditional surrender of the gangster dictatorships.