For an able man the Bishop of Birmingham has an
aston- ishing capacity for talking—something less than sense. What, for example, is to be made of this, in a sermon last Sunday : " Our abler young men of university standing present a very good case when they demand that politicians should make peace, not civil defence, their main objective."
If abler younger men really do argue that way the sooner abler older men try to reason with them the better. Dr. Barnes may, of course, have been referring to Soviet politicians ; but it seems unlikely. As to British politicians, what man of them is there in any party who does not make peace his chief objective ? What politicians—to take a single example—have been trying year after year to make peace with Austria and what politi- cians have year after year been preventing that ? Civil defence is no one's first objective. It is a second objective which has to be pursued because the first objective, peace, cannot be attained—through the fault of no, one in this country.
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