(Copyright in All Countries.)
The Conflict's Deeper
monwealth of Nations.
mately wrecked the League
tops
of
Issues
-By- Lord Elton
tion on a world scale.
no one of them
"HE longer the war lasts, the
of each have told their peoples "the storm will blow itself out clearer become the issues at
before it reaches us," and that it stake in it. Gradually the clouds
has even been the democracies vanish, and the mountain stand forth, terrible but majestic.
which have armed their would-be murderers, the French Comite des Certainly there have been plenty
Forges, providing Germany and of clouds. From 1918 to 1999 our mistakes were legion-only they Twenty-Two Years Armistice one with the
Italy
the with their coal, and faults of democracy. United States providing Japait never betrayed the world cause of the principal invis ble exports which are many, and the faults of with its oil. for which we are now fighting. Our to the United States had been plutocracy, which are more. IT treatment of Germany, at Ver- British lecturers, who made it the fullest sense
All the remaining legatees of sailles and after, was a foredoomed their business to decry and; in- can claim to be considered Chris-Christian civilisation, it must be. attempt at compromise between deed, to misrepresent, the British tian at all. In spite of which they admitted, have, in varying de- those (and they were mainly Commonwealth. These were most- still represent those limits which areas, abjured their okti principles. Thus, in Britain we are entitled, I This attitude may be Frenchmen) who wished to handle ly quite unrepresentative malcon- centuries of Christian civilisation think, to claim that the nation
her so severely that she could tents, many of them of alien cri- had imposed upon the primitive
} explained by the fact that never threaten the peace of gin. men whose forebears had instincts of violence, now revived still lives by Christian standards. Britain already has aug-Europe again, and those (and played no part in the building of by the drive for power of the is improbable, for example, that British sailors or airmen, even it they were mainly. British) who the Commonwealth,
totalitarian states. mented her forces in wished to treat her so generously. Nevertheless, their self-imposed
ordered to do so, would machine- It was Christianity, after all; un women and children "in"a would soon become a task was made easier by the good-which first taught mankind. the lifeboat. It would not occur Egypt and the Eastern that she
to ignorance which still Mediterranean. When the friendly partner in a new Com-natured
persisted in the United States as equal and eternal value of every them that such conduct would be human being; which infinitely inconsistent with the teaching It was this fundamental con- to the very nature of the free real test.comes the Ital-
transcends all the power and glory of the New Testament: they would tradiction, together with the un-
of the world. And it is ultimately probably merely say that it would ians may find themselves expected withdrawal of the Unit-
upon that foundation that the be "a dirty trick." The fact re- Rule of Law has been established, mains that the standards are still fighting not only Britain ed States, whose President had conceived and framed. it, and its
the principle, that is no longer there. What is more doubtful' is but the Egyptians and own failure to devise a formula
recognised outside the democracies how far the original Christian be- to-day, that men and women lief from which these standards having at the same time for peaceful change, which ulti-
*ATE- men and women' and once sprang still fully survives. to keep intact. long sup-Nations. But to the last the Bri-
not mechanical slaves of the What an old theologian would
and that
citizen have no of association of nations within the State,
called "works" are there. ply lines over deserts. Ittish clung to their traditional and
perhaps overeasygoing ideal British Commonwealth, in which shall be imprisoned or punished Whether, after an impartial. ex- is not yet clear that the live and let live. Thus the mean- Egyptians will fight. But in the Munich Settlement in every Dominion is as indepen- without trial by the mere wish of amination of, let us say, our edu 1038, after which marry critics in dent as the United States, and as a tyrant: the principle that, pro-cationul system, we can claim that Eire to decline to take vided he observes the law, he what he would have.. called they have said. they will the United States derided us for free as
any "faith" is still fully alive is an- our Isolationism in declining to part in the war, the whole com- cannot be haled away by if Egypt is attacked. The go to: war to save a democracy posing the first successful experi- Ogpu or Gestapo to an unknown other matter; And will the moral consequently that, in standards, which are the legacy of words of prayers for peace outlined with which we had no treaties of ment in international organisa-fate-and
the
the old English Christian teaching, survive if the boast. his "home is his castle." Christian faith itself is in decay? by King Fuad more-name many British citizens had
sheltered in which the upbring-Can virtuous.agnosticism be more only recently became familiar,. But partly also thr's tendency to over, constitute an ap
was that Mr. Neville Chamberlain see the struggle as a mere death-ing of his children is still the than an intermediate phase?
even of their parents concern Deal not only to Allah but still hoped for a future in which a grapple of imperialisms is to be
Already in the democracies a determined onslaught has been to the entire Mohamme-strong Britain and a strong Ger-accounted for by the familiar in more than of the State.
Germany, stinct of the spectator to ration- There are other characteristics, made by a small but vocal-mino- many could' co-exist. Han race to whom the race it was assumed, having formally alise his natural reluctance to of course, of life in a society rity of the intelligentsia, not so which has not abjured its ort-much against Christian dogma as theories of Nazism and renounced further. territorial de- share other people's troubles.
mands in Europe, would pur- In the same way, while we were 'ginal Christian principles-kind- against Christian morality. Some Fascism are a menace. sue her remaining objectives deciding not to fight Germany, ness to the weak, for example, is of the most conspicuous. British peacefully. What finally forced all over Czechoslovak'a, we told our not ridiculed as decadence, nor exponents of this new paganisņi, still to these selves that Czechoslovakians had the interest of the State held to young men of military age, are Another reason why those who so clue was the always maltreated their German be the only moral standard but now in the United States for the Britain does not permit renewed violence and treachery minority, and that anyway the all, perhaps are involved in that duration.
an artificial one fundamental distinction, the In Britain, however, we are now herself to become excited with which Germany seized the whole country was
remnant of Czechoslovakia: A few product of the Treaty of Ver- recognition of the ultimate and being offered a supreme oppor- diverse significance of every hutunity-supreme both in the sense over the Italian move in years earlier there had bean an sailles.
influential body of op'nion in With the spread of the law of man personality.
that It is the last and in the sense Egypt is that Italian for- Britain in favour of trying to the Gestapo across Western It is the tragedy of to-day that that it is the greatest. We stand tunes, like those of the meet German colonial claims. Europe, and the closing down of all these principles are still be alone as the last bulwark of the This Adolf Hitler had now effec-one free wireless station after an- lieved in, as President Roosevelt Christian tradition which has Nazis, cannot be won in tually obliterated. How could one other, the issue stands out starker, said in another connection, by 00 been built with infinite patience Africa. They depend on return backward races to the Stripped to the bones, that issue per cent of humanity. And yet by many different schools and control of the regime of the Gesis: Shall Christian civilisation the Gestapo continues to extend peoples down the centuries; we' the Battle of Britain. As tano and concentration camps? survive? And by that. I mean not its sway. It is the tragedy of to-stand unsupported by any other,
he future of France, of What is at stake. However, in only the civilisation of Western day that, despite all they shared unconquered nation, save In so..
this war is not the British Empiro. Europe and the British Dominions in common, and now see over- far as the right (theoretically Holland, Denmark, Nor- or rather, it is much more than but the civilisation of the United shadowed by the same menace, shared by Germany) to purchase way, and indeed that of the British Empire. Nine months States, which grew up upon simmi- both Britain and America lacked American goods in the open mar- ago there were plenty of voices ar foundations during that cen- statesmen with the vision to guide ket may be counted as support. western civilisation; is to be heart in the United States, tury of peace when the British their peoples toward a world We face a Prussia which was late contingent on the fight this was only an old-fashioned supremacy,
and elsewhers, proclaiming that Navy. enjoyed unchallenged Commonwealth, a unity based and imperfectly converted to the and which will be upon common. language. Interest, Christian faith, n Prussia from aging over the British struggle between two greedy im destroyed if that navy should dis- and tradition, and strong enough which the old gods were never.
to maintain the peace of the world | completely exorcised, a Prussia. ales, so the future of ther the stakes no the result con-
perialisms, a wor in which, nal--| appear.
against any challenge, whether which for centuries has been bulit. Africa and Italy's place cornod anyone but the parti This civilisation is undoubtedly from Weator. East.It is the by war and för var as no State- here now rests with the hounded strangely, on Unis Nazis are right in calling it a after democracy has hoped to question, is not only, can we com
cipants, That view, which oven much else besides Christian. The tragedy of to-day that democracy ever was baforo. The tremendous embattled population of side of the Atlantic, was partly pluto-democracy. In varying des shelter behind the sacrifices of quer Prussia, but can we conquer accounted for by the fact that grees the civilisation of all the the latest victim of totalitarlarr ourselves? Can we achieve re- beleaguered island.“
during the last decade of the threatened countries, is stamped aggression, so that the loaders generation through sufforing?
alliance and. with whose
vory