HE statement made by the Lord Chancellor in the House
of Lords on Wednesday regarding the treatment of Germany is very much to be welcomed. The Bishop of Chichester, in appealing
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NEWS OF THE WEEK
for an official and categorical declaration on the Government's atti- tude, based himself squarely on the distinction drawn last Novem- ber by Marshal Stalin between the destruction of Germany—which M. Stalin ruled out as impossible—and the destruction of the Hitlerite State, and Lord Simon accepted both the purpose and the distinction without reserve. His words are worth quoting textually, for clarity on this point may have an appreciable effect on the duration of the war. His Majesty's Government, said the Lord Chancellor, agreed with Premier Stalin that the Hitlerite State could, and should, be destroyed, and that the whole German people was not, as Dr. Goebbels was trying to persuade them, doomed to destruction ; he wished to put those two propositions with equal clearness, firmness and emphasis. That does not completely clarify the situation, for it cannot be completely clarified. The
11 punishment of the guilty, to which the Lord Chancellor referred as one of the Government's fixed resolves, will present immense diffi- culties, and it is no doubt true, as Lord Vansittart (whose influence would be much greater if he could manage to state his case with moderation) observed, that at the end of the war something like tot per cent, of the German people will be claiming to have been something like tot per cent. anti-Nazi. But that situation can be dealt with when it arises. Meanwhile, it is of immense im- portance that the British Government should have identified itself completely and unreservedly with the Russian on one of the most vital issues of the whole war, and that British propagandists should now be in a position to broadcast to Germany a statement of policy that will cut invaluable ground from under Goebbels' feet.
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