REFLECTIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 204, 29 August 1928, Page 7

REFLECTIONS.

WORLD PEACE VIEWS. Signing Of The Treaty And What It Means. CUSHENDUN'S OUTLOOK. (British Official Wireless.) (Received 12.30 p.m.) RUGBY, August 2S. The newspapers devote much space to descriptions of yesterday's solemn act in Paris when the peace pact was signed at the Quai d'Orsay by the plenipotentiaries of fifteen countries, and in editorials high hopes are based on the promise it offers for the future of world peace. The British representative at the ceremony, Lord Cushendun, met the party after the signatures had been appended and emphasised that the very signing of the pact was the most significant and impressive demonstration that had ever been made of the world's earnest desire to maintain peace and to avoid war. It was a fact that by now we ought to have reached a stage in the world's history in which we could do without war, either as an instrument of national policy or in settlement of disputes. The pact would suffer only if it were burdened with an extravagant interpretation and while nobody imagined that by the signing of this treaty war would be finally abolished, it should have an incontestable moral effect. Referring to the attitude of Britain, which had been somewhat wrongly represented in many quarters, Lord Cushendun said that the British Government had been in favour of the pact from the very first, but it desired to be quite certain as to the exact meaning of what it was asked to sign. In this respect it had received full satisfaction in the correspondence exchanged. Discussing the ceremony Lord Cushendun said that the presence of Herr Stresemann at the Quai d'Orsay, seated next to the French Foreign Minister, M. Briand, and signing the pact with his former antagonists only 10 years after the greatest war in history, had a significance which could not be lost upon the world. It was a twofold act of courage. Not only was Herr Stresemann actuated by the highest motives of statesmanship and political courage but, in view of the state of his health, it was an act of physical courage also. Discussing the attitude of the United States towards the pact Lord Cushendun declared that it was important that people should realise that nothing Mr. F. B. Kellogg had done or said in connection with the initiation and completion of the pact could be taken to imply any modification of the traditional American aloofness from European complications. The extent to which the United States participated in European affairs was a matter for themselves, and this was in no way modified by the provisions circumstances of the pact. Referring to the fact that he signed as the representative of the Emperor of India as well as of the King of Great Britain and the Dominions and Colonies that were not represented on the League of Nations Lord Cushendun said that no people stood to benefit from the pact more than the people of India, whose country in the past had so often been subjected to devastation.