10 OCTOBER 1941, Page 10

I recall that at the time of the Abyssinian crisis

of 1935 1 received from one of my constituents a post-card on which were written the words: "Surely the Government must realise that what the people of this country want is the Covenant of the League of Nations and collective security and that they will never stand for any European entanglements." What distresses me about this amazing statement is not so much that one of my constituents (who are in other matters patient and wise) should have displayed tragic confusion of thought, as that when I have quoted this paradox to audiences throughout the country I have observed that many of them regard this nonsense as a quite logical observation. For in truth the phrase "collective security" acquired for us in those years the narcotic, the almost-anaesthetic, properties of a hypnotic formula, and doped us into the belief that by some facile means we could obtain security in this wicked world without the expenditure of energy, the strain of sacrifice, or the accumulation of power.