HIS LORDSHIP FALLS FLAT

To a mum audience of Oxford undergraduates, in a dim lecture hall which, not long before, had resounded with pacifist slogans, Britain's Foreign Secretary expounded last week the novel doctrine that this war is one "between youth and youth." Assuming the role of Pontius Pilate for his generation, Lord Halifax squarely lays the responsibility for the Second World War at the door of German youth, whom he condemns in one and the same breath as "materialistic" and "prepared to sacrifice their lives without a moment's hesitation." A jumble of mysticisms and paradoxes, His Lordship's speech is termed by the New York Times "a Chesterfield essay. . (which) may become a wartime classic." But whatever its literary merits, Halifax's hate-tirade is a biter pill to swallow after the British government's repeated assertions that Britain fights the Nazi government, not the German people.

"Cling to the Christian ideal . . . it is only by force on the battle ground that evil can be resisted." The group of undergraduates thus addressed did not respond; it persisted in motionless silence. "The racial doctrine as interpreted in the Nazi creed is sheer, primitive nonsense . . . be proud of the race to which you belong"--Still no hurrah shouts from the audience. The catch-words of 1914 do not catch any more; their halo has faded out in the grisly twilight of reality. British youth knows that war is a messy business; and it refuses to believe the old-school patriots who represent it as a struggle for a "better world."

If, as Lord Halifax contends, German youth has been "deliberately deprived of the elements of true judgment," this is hardly its own fault. It has been misled by its chauvinistic leaders, who, as his Lordship should remember, could only ascend to power in a Germany that had been crippled by Allied chauvinism at Versailles. Thus, if the German intellect has suffered a general blackout, Lord Halifax and his peace-loving generation should take their full share of credit for it.

1940 cannot resuscitate the drunken enthusiasm of 1914, any more than ten million men can be resuscitated from the fields of glory. There will doubtless be a number of flag-waving enthusiasts in this country; and perhaps one of them will even climb on a rostrum in Memorial Hall to address an audience of future soldiers. But however noble-spirited his talk, it will not elicit the raucous cheers of olden times. To convince the new generation of the necessity of war, more plausible arguments are needed than the hackneyed formulae which sent the heroes of 1914 to their graves.