The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo The Sun. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1935. NEW ZEALAND AND EUROPE

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 224, 21 September 1935, Page 8

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo The Sun.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1935. NEW ZEALAND AND EUROPE

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

A feeling akin to despair must beset many people who reflect upon the slow-moving tragedy which is being enacted at Geneva. Here in this small but no longer remote Dominion we are but tardily recovering from the effects of the war of 1914-18. For the outbreak of that war we had no responsibility, but, Britain being threatened, her cause was ours, and as a member of the Britisli Commonwealth of Nations we bore our part in the struggle. To-day, as a member both of the British Commonwealth and of the League of Nation, we are running a risk (whether great or small, who can say?) of being dragged into another conflict, for the origin of which again we have no responsibility. The Prime Minister remarked to a pacifist deputation this week that there can be hardly a man or a woman in New Zealand who is not utterly opposed to war. This being the feeling, how comes it that the New Zealand Government's policy, voiced by its representative at Geneva and endorsed publicly this week by Mr. Forbes (and also, be it noted, by the president of the New Zealand Labour Party, Mr. Nash), is that "if any nation attempted to upset peace New Zealand would do its part by joining with other nations in preventing an unprovoked attack from being made"?

The short explanation, of course, was given by Mr. Forbes when he said that New Zealand had "sincerely and honestly" signed the Covenant of the League of Nations, and thereby had undertaken certain responsibilities Which she should discharge if the need arose. Also, as he said on a more famous occasion, if Britain should go to war we should in fact be at Avar also —and that would be true even in the extremely unlikely event that ■we protested our "neutrality." But there is a more fundamental explanation than either of these, and it may be epitomised by saying that, whether Ave now like it or not, we are part of the world economic system. From the international point of view the outstanding development of modern times has been the increase in the speed of communications and transport. But for that there would be no League of Nations; possibly there would be no thought in Italy of conquering distant Abyssinia; certainly the news of such a possibility would not greatly interest us in New Zealand. For New Zealand in all likelihood would still be mainly a wool-growing community. Little did those New Zealanders who, but fifty-three years ago, joyously hailed the success of the first shipment of refrigerated cargo (dependent, of course, on speedy transport) imagine what strange and potent consequences were therein implied. They dreamed of a great development in our export trade. That has long since been realised, until now New Zealand, of dairy produce alone, exports a greater quantity than any other country in the world. In return came new and undreamt-of wealth to this country, and that wealth is to be measured to-day in a vigorous, healthy and intelligent people and in a productive equipment sufficient for a much larger population than now exists. These things have long since passed into common understanding; but the secondary effect of speedier communications and transport are far less thoroughly and widely understood. The nations of the world have been "brought closer together." New Zealand has been brought closer to Europe —how close we realised afresh last October when Scott and Campbell Black flew from England to Melbourne in two days and 23 hours; how close, we are realising again to-day as we read the threats of Mussolini and the appeals of Haile Silassie. Even so, we might be less concerned if it were not that our main market is on the fringe of Europe, and upon free and regular access to that market we are dependent for much of what Ave have and hope to have.

Hence, it is through self-interest as well as from motives of altruism that we desire peace in Europe. If peace is broken there our material interests will he damaged, as certainly as (in the case of Italy and Abyssinia) our conscience will be shocked. New Zealand signed the League Covenant "sincerely and honestly," but it may be doubted that either Mr. Massey or Sir Joseph Ward, Still less the great majority of the New Zealanders they represented, appreciated the magnitude and nature of, the responsibilities thereby undertaken. The League has been attempting to evolve a. collective peace system, and that still fragile creation is in danger of being smashed. Britain, to whom we are bound more closely than ever before, stands ready to preserve and strengthen that system, if other nations will bear their share of the task of preserving it. If it can be preserved and strengthened, then, with the aid of the British Navy, Britain's security and ours will be better assured than ever they were, even when the Navy was the strongest in the world. If the system cannot be preserved, if there must be a return to the old, bad system of fullyarmed Powers, of a Europe continually in a state of unstable equilibrium, then there must be a complete and swift reversal of post-war weakening tendencies in Imperial defence. In any such policy New Zealand must be closely concerned, and she will undoubtedly be expected to bear a greater share of its cost than she has borne hitherto. Whether the future system is to be the League system of collective security or a new Empire system of defence, New Zealand inevitably will be a part of it. In either case we shall hope to reap the advantages, and in either case we must be prepared to share the cost —and the risks.