PEACE THE AIM.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 47, 25 February 1929, Page 7

PEACE THE AIM.

| " ' GOVERNMENT POLICY.

Improvement In Britain*? Foreign Relations. U.S. QTJARBEL BOGY. British Official Wireless , Received 1.30 rvm.' RUGBY, February 24. Sir Austen Chamberlain, speaking at Torquay last night, said that Great Britain and the United Stateshave many roots in common in their past history and they live largely under the same laws and speak the same language. '"TVe have recently had some discussion with them in which we have no: been able to reach agreement. VTe have

such discussions not infrequently with the same result, yet nobody becomes alarmed and thinks it an unusual thing if a common solution of a difficult problem cannot be reachedh

The measure of attention which has been given to whatever differences have existed between the L'nited States ar.d ourselves is not really the intrinsic value j of the questions at stake, but it is a! measure of the desire which we have j for friendship with the nation whieh is j most akin to our own." D>%T.ling with the achievements of the '• Government Sir Austen said that nobody would deny not only that world; peace was more secure and that they j were discussing their international j difficulties in a new and better spirit.! but that they had turned over a new j leaf and closed the chapter of the Great | War and the years that followed it. i They had opened a brighter chapter.

The early year 3 which followed the signing of peace brought no peace to the nations, but the position became worse and it seemed a certain prediction that sooner or later, perhaps not in his time ; bat in that of his children or grand- j children, that the old conditions would! again arise and the world would be j flung once more into a terribly struggle j from which western civilisation wouid never again emerge. • It was upon some such Europe, where. , behind all and at the root of all. lay the ; feeling of fear and sighs of insecurity. that he at first looked out of the' Foreign Office window.

"We sought- to win back the confidence of France and from the clow friendship with oar war ally to build j np a common reconciliation. lam re- ; proached with being in M. ' Briand's: pocket. I told him so and he seemed | to think his pocket was not quite j enough to contain the Foreign Minister j ot Great Britain. "Be also told me that if I was re-, proached with subservience to him. he' was also, in his own country, reproached I with subservience to me but we have. [ from the first, declared that we base I our foreign policy on the League of i Nations. j

'""I would not have you lull yourselves to sleep with the idea that the constitution of the League of Nations ha.s made war impossible. That is a resnjt which may never be obtained or which at any rate must take long years of honest endeavour to achieve.*'