TOPICS OF THE DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20991, 19 December 1939, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY

Must Keep Their Word “We have no other aim than to destroy Hitlerism, and no elaboration of that simple purpose should be permitted,” writes Sir Ernest Benn in The Times. “We must refrain, for instance, from talking of dictators, for the German knows that we tried to make a bargain with the worst of dictators and that our a Polish allies were living under a form of dictatorship themselves. Equally useless is it to emphasise the virtues of democratic government, for the Germans are not desirous of adopting our system. Freedom cannot be delivered to order or called up at will; least of all can it be imported from abroad. Liberty is a very slow growth; ours was planted at Runnymede in 1215, and 724 years have proved insufficient to give the flower that full ‘sweetness and perfume’ of which Cowper wrote. Liberty is in fact much more a matter of breed and experience than of systems. To win this war, and to make another war less likely, we need to say quite simply to the German people—Give us a Government which accepts the principle of negotiation as a substitute for force and which is composed of people whose bond is worth having.”