Sir Samuel Hoare Speaks on Government's Aims London, Feb. 23.
The Home Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, speaking at the National Chamber of. Trade lunch in London to-day, said that for months past Europe had seemed to be irrevocably splitting itself into two hostile camps.
Both, he said, were arming with feverish activity. In both alike there were rumours, very dangerous rumours, of an inevitable clash. In circumstances such as these, a great responsibility rested on the British Government.
The Government were not prepared to accept the inevitability of war. They did not believe that a catastrophe must come. They were determined to make a sustained effort to drive the haunting fear of war out of the hearts of the men and women in Europe. They might fail in their attempt, but he asked the country to believe in their integrity.
This, Sir Samuel Hoare said, was no cowardly and shady negotiation upon which they had embarked. It was an honest attempt to face the causes of difference and remove them with honour and justice to both sides.
Nor was it, in any sense, a sacrifice of old friends.—It they wished to make new friends, he said, there could ones. T be no questing of abandoning the old
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.