Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 1930. POLICING THE WORLD.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 50, Issue 82, 17 January 1930, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 1930. POLICING THE WORLD.

Whatever may be the outcome. of the Five-Power Conference, which is to be opened in Loudon on Tuesday, it cannot be regarded as oilier than a stage in the journey in the direction of securing universal' peace. It will at best be but a stone in the great structure, the keystone is'still wanting, and perhaps will never he discovered. Before the world can he made "safe for peace," to paraphrase Dr. Woodrow Wilson's famous phrase, many a hard problem will have to be solved and many a police operation, so extensive as to be superficially indistinguishable from war, may have to be earned out. To imagine that because the greater civilised nations are resolved to keep peace between themselves and to outlaw violence as a* means of . settling international disputes, the whole of mankind will therefore behave as brothers, is as foolish as to think that suppression of law within a community renders a police force superfluousi. International progress consists precisely in the substitution of the "police idea" for the idea of personal violence and in the supersession of "private" war for the advantage of an individual nation by arrangements for "public" vindication of the strength of the law-abiding against the insubordination of the lawless. In an article dealing with this aspect of world peace the "Review of Reviews'" stated recently: "In proportion as the greater nations band themselves together for the organisation of peace, the lawless will become more prudent. . . Action on the part of the principal civilised Powers need not be military or naval. Economic and financial pressure, proper!v applied, may suffice. At the lowest estimate, civilised peoples will end by learning that ihe sacrifices which economic and financial pressure may entail will always be smaller than the sacrifices and losses involved by war; and as the international organisation of industry proceeds, -the means of exercising such pressure will increase in efficiency." Thus it is desirable that o'reat nations should be organised industrially in such fashion as to enable them to take part, on canal terms, in world-wide economic arrangements. The "Review" expresses the opinion that little might be the lofle run if cut-throat competition in industry were to replace cutthroat rivalry in armaments and agencies of destruction. _ But surely no industrial competition, however fierce, could ever work the harm that the race for armaments actually brings about and potentially threatens. When the world has reached that ,*tage of progress mankind will have made such advance in economic science that the principle of_ natural industries will be applied. "However that mav be. there is truth in the assertion that pence will not be assured until the war mind has been exorcised and has o-iven place to the spirit of emulation in constructive and productive human activities.