The air raids*of the late war were more important as an augury of future menace than as a threat to British security. They were irritate ing but not deadly. Far more serious at the time was the submarine portance. Let Germany make war on Russia, swallow Czechoslovakia what business is it of Britain's? 1 he wat can be kept east of the Rhine, by worry? This indifference to the ance of power and to the effect on Britain's imperial position after a war in which. whether a participant or not, Japan must be a winner or lose: illustrates the bewilderment of the public mind, For the preachers of this view are not, in the main, the old-fashioned radical pacifists but self-styled imperial realists.
This policy, though widely accepted and preached in high places, has little chance of adoption. The rulers of Britain are practical men, and they know that isolation was never less feasible than now—unless the price is paid; and that price is a surrender of the Imperial position of Britain. No more than in 1914, can Britain let France be destroyed, and so Britain is tied to French policy; she can warn, she can attempt to bully, but in the long run, for geographical and military, as well as for economic and imperial reasons, Britain and France, the two western empires that hold so much that other people want, have to stick together.
That sticking together may be disguised under phrases like "our common democratic ideals" but the basis of this unwilling union is factual, not ideal. If there is a war, Britain will be in it and on; the French Editor: may pontificate and Gert diplomats give parties, but the deci-m is inevitable.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.