"THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 714, 20 March 1953, Page 5

"THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE"

Sir-I have just been listening to Chester Wilmot (per the BBC and 2YZ) discussing the conduct of the war as set forth in his above-named book. Here is the gospel according to Wilmot: s fundamental error was to undera the military strength of Russia. Roosevelt’s was to under-estimate the Russian’s territorial ambitions in Europe. That of the Americans generally was their failure, to respect the sacred principle of the balance of power. That of the Allies as a whole was their subordination of political to military considerations. They actually fought the Nazis meaning to beat them and exterminate their system, instead of realising that the last war was merely the opening gambit of the next one (and the one after that, if anyone is ‘left ‘to fight it.) Gad, sir, ‘Churchill was right! It has taken a good many years since 1945 to condition public opinion to ithe point where this sort of stuff can be put over without much fear of protest. That it is now being attempted is a tribute to the success of reiterated propaganda in blunting the moral sense that susstained our cause when there was little else to do so. This is the discredited outlook that has dragged the world through a series of wars, each of which solves nothing, but poses problems more insoluble than the last. The self-styled "realists" who haVe resurrrected it are now busy remilitarising Germany and Japan to do their will. When at last their realpolitik becomes unstuck again (as so often in the past) and their protégés turn upon them, they will once more call upon ordinary decent people to get them out of the mess of their own making. As before they will rely upon the outraged and uncalculating moral sense of millions to save the day. Hitler erred fundamentally, not in under-estimating Russian military power, but in failing to foresee the revulsion created everywhere by a system based in cruelty and deceit. Wilmot likewise errs in analysing the last war upon the supposition thdt the manoeuvrings of generals and politicians constitute

history.

H. W.

YOUREN

(Napier).