1941-07-08 — Page 23

THE CHINA MAIL, JULY 8, 1941.””

CHINA MAIL

WINDSOR HOUSE

THE DEMOCRATIC

PEACE

If the dangerous idea still ling- ers anywhere in bomb-torn Bri- tain that it might one day be possible to make with the Ger- man Army the peace which can- not be made with Hitlerism, Mr. Anthony Eden does not share it. If the illusion persists that Britain can weaken the Nazis' hold over the German people by promises of future leniency, the Foreign Minister's latest version of British "prace aims" gives it little sup- port. He is ruther more empha- tie than any previous spokesinan in his declaration that peace terms "will be designed to prevent a repetition of Germany's misdeeds"; that Germany is "the worst master Europe has yet known" and must "never be in a position" to violate European peace again,

British

It is not Hitler of

whom he speaks, but Germany The words foreclose any fetitious peace of appeasement with ani unbroken German military power, by whatever name it might be called: they give no guarantees to the Germans and imply a total victory, or defeat.

Nothing else is possible to-day. and it is useless to dream of any easier exit from the immeasur- able

Hitlerism savagery which has forced upon the world. Either Germany must make the future Or the democracies, and which- ever wins the right to do so, the other must and will be put be- yond the power of forcibly over- throwing the structure. The issue has passed beyond promises | of leniency to the vanquished power: the only promises that can now be made are promises of the kind of future which

the

victory of one side or the other will hold out to all the peoples. There Mr. Eden places the possi- bilitles of a British victory beside

"We are fading I think, My Gertie!”

"Why?"

"Well, we aren't attracting the blitz boys any more.'

""

Wanted A Fresh

Air Plan

those offered by the totalitarians. SEVERAL weeks ago a Nazi chaotic past and plan anew with

Where Hitlerism is driven im- periously within obvious that motive of

we

health and

made by draining and ploughing through thirty centuries.

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→

That is what we are now destroying every year with sui- cidal speed in our unplanned countryside.

We are all aware that the speculative builder is ruming the bomb destroyed three houses modern notions of

He Is beauty of our landscape. transport. to ravage everything a hundred yards from my door.

So long as it is towns we have doing something even worse.

of his tedious The ribbons At first, as 1 passed them, what! its

"il reach,

1s

Movement a blend of anger and to plan, our Labour have no I felt was

villas follow the roads and roads and beading too, it cares about the country.

flat and fertile and Even round London, before it is the land is

well-worked. On the top of the beap was a too late, we may save as our play-

Round a

Chiltern village 1 know well have been watch-t ing for Len years this rapid

wealth. destruction of

One by one the best fields are sold for building, and the dwindling farms produce less wheat and thier! milk, while the man who sells the land grows rich.

While some of us (with my warm sympathy) will plead with Mr. Greenwood that the ameniz ties of the country shall be re- national plan, 1 spected in his want to plead for the wealth di

A

man

was

Gradually the wreckage cleared, and now I pass the gap with a disposition to thank that Junknown enemy. He let in fight:

By H..N. Brailsford

We have

self-interest prompt-pity. Three hopes lay in brutal has sound instincts. In one sense, tend to, me most numerous wheret ing us to economic exploitation confusion-books of Germany or of the rest of toys and bricks. Europe." Where Hitlerism carries page torn from Mr. Wells's "Out- privation wherever it goes, a Bri-line of History." From under his

immediately bushy brows Neanderthal will tish victory

all surveyed our civilisation. open up to Germans and to Europeans the mounting stores of Commonwealth and the British the Americas. It is to the British interest to restore political and

and air, and he set me planning. ground the Chiltern woods and spiritual freedom, to restore

I realised more sharply than the Surrey hills. The country as fruitful international exchange of ever I had done before what ab- a park in which we may walk on goods, to avert the starvation and|ject victims we all are to property a Sunday is an iden

grasped, want into which such vast areas and tradition.

Many wise men have been busy I think we may trust Arthur of the world are so rapidly sink- ing and must continue to sink in drafting a new version of the Greenwood to remember this In

iights of man. If I had to do it, his planning.

Of all claims on the land, the under a Hitler empire. And these I know what right I should put

and first should be the farmers', are Britain's peace aims, and what first-the right to fresh air and

its future But is that all we mean by the when we assign to it

care must be to the world Germans, as well as sunlight, the right to a long vista

use, our first countryside? Englishmen or Greeks or Ameri-of space, the right to see green

If such notions govern our plan- protect the old pastures and the cans or Japanese may expect grass and trees.

ning, we shall destroy our island ploughed fields.

That means

revolution in and falsify our history. of a British victory.

We are pitiful slaves if we allow : not precise; it is

Land is earth into which men our urban values, and it sets us They are

for the the landlords and the lawyers to drive the spade and the plough. the task of raising the country- doubtful if any plans

rob us of these things.

Land is first of all the soil in which man's standard of life-his cot- future could be drawn with pre-

We have all been reflecting in

grass and wheat and potatoes tage, his school and his recrea- cision now. But they are very this style since the bombs began spread their roots. Land Is food, tions as well as his wages up

I defy anyone, even great nims. What Mr. Eden fails to fall.

to the townsman's level. but, above all, land is labour. to do, as other

Do not let the Book of Genesis British spokes-Colonel Blimp, to visit the devas-

a

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land.

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the soil,

But how, when we try to pre-