FEARS FOR PEACE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 83, 8 April 1925, Page 4

FEARS FOR PEACE.

When the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs warns us that tinless the fear of war can be relieved and security given, there will be another great war in Europe, he says what many writers and public men have said in the last few years. It is, however, one thing for a newspaper to predict such a catastrophe, or for a statesman not in office to utter such a warning, but it is another thing for the British Minister of Foreign Affairs to spt>ak so plainly. Such plain speaking is rare. Ministers and diplomatists generally say less than they feel, not as a rule from any wish to deceive, but because they fear that blunt, speaking may produce the conditions they wish to prevent. Before 1914 there must have been some British statesman who regarded war as wellnigh inevitable. It would be their (iefoiice that they considered it their duty to hope for peace until the last moment, and in so hoping not to say anything that might produce the conviction that war was unavoidable. Mr. Austen Chamberlain, living in different times, prefers to be. more out-spoken, lie is not an alarmist by nature, but a cautious and cool-headed man, and we may take it that he regards the international situation as not a bit less serious than his words indicate. The comparative degree of detachment of Britain from the affairs of Europe gives his views a peculiar significance. Hi = words are addressed not only to his countrymen, but to the world. Kβ wishes the British people and foreign nations to realise the perils of the situation, and devise and agree to some plan for keeping the peace-. The Protocol, in the opinion of the British Government, will not do, but something must bo substituted for it.