THE CHOICE BETWEEN EVILS [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR]
Sm,—I do not think that even the supporters of the Munich " peace " have ventured to call it a righteous one, and if it is not a righteous one then it must be an unrighteous one. Canon Barry thinks that Mr. Chamberlain made the right choice between two " frightful evils." Here he seems to confuse moral with physical evil, and to assert that it is right to do a great moral wrong in order to avert a great physical catastrophe. In short, he would agree with those who say " Let us do evil that good may come," and whom St. Paul so strongly denounced. The whole cowardly business reminds me of a well-known Biblical episode in which, in the words of Milton, " the inhospitable door in Gibeah exposed a matron to avoid worse rape."
A few years ago we had the " rape of Abyssinia " which the Archbishop of Canterbury referred to as those " unhappy events "—a curiously mild expression ; now we have the rape of Czechoslovakia and in neither case has he uttered any strong protest. How we can hope, with Canon Barry, to establish the righteousness of God's Kingdom on a basis of fundamental unrighteousness I fail to see. I. remember a judge once saying of a man that, though he had not com- mitted any actual crime, he had yet acted in a cowardly manner. Should he not rather have said, in the words of one of the greatest of Hebrew chieftains [Judas Maccabeus] " Let us die but let us not stain our honour " ?
" Woe unto them," says Isaiah, " that decree unrighteous decrees "; there are many similar denunciations in this great prophet's sayings which are singularly applicable to the present situation, but I must not quote them. The Munich agreement is very much like the Hoare-Laval plan with regard to Abyssinia which an indignant nation caused our Government to drop.
If, as humanly speaking seems extremely probable, we have one day to go to war in self defence it will be with the humiliating consciousness that we have already twice " stained our honour " by our betrayal of two weak peoples.—Yours, &c.,
Aughton Rectory, Ormskirk, Lane. ROGER F. MARKHAM.
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