ALLIES’ WAR AIMS

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20954, 6 November 1939, Page 6

ALLIES’ WAR AIMS

The establishment of confidence among the nations is regarded By Viscount Halifax, British Foreign Secretary, as the first and foremost consideration when the time comes to make peace among the Powers now at war. The Foreign Secretary was asked in the House of Lords to more clearly define the aims of the Allies in the present war. The confidence which the German Government had destroyed, he said, must be repaired. The primary aim was to win the war by defeating those who had by their repeated violation of European order and threats to freedom obliged the Allies to take up arms. There, of course, Lord Halifax touched the heart of the whole problem. Germany destroyed confidence among all the people of Europe and among others in all parts of the world. There was no escape from the obligation which Britain and France accepted in protection of the democratic way of life in all countries. Shirking of that obligation would have meant that all countries now free would soon suffer the fate of Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. So the challenge had to be accepted, and no nation or combination of nations ever had a more worthy cause in going to war. Certainly the prim 3 necessity is to win the war, and then, as Lord Halifax says, to establish a new order in which all free nations will be able to place their confidence. The duty is not upon Britain alone; it devolves upon all peoples of good faith. At the moment apparently only the Nazis differ from that point of view. Lord Halifax admitted that he faced a difficult task when he attempted to define the Allies’ war aims in precise terms. Yet with unerring judgment and a high moral sense he pointed immediately to the world’s greatest need and to the only way of achieving that objective. There is in reality nothing indefinite about the cause for which the Allies are fighting. It is a fight to destroy a universally identified enemy of everything that is worth while in life—an enemy who was pressing insistently upon the citadel of civilisation and who had to be thrown back at once or never. There is not a doubt in the mind of any true Briton or Frenchman that the Allies took the only right and proper course. If corroboration were needed it is found in the unquestionable moral support of every other free nation.