KEEPING WARS LOCALISED

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 21050, 29 December 1933, Page 3

KEEPING WARS LOCALISED

AMERICAN'S IDEA AGREEMENT ON NEUTRALITY URGED NEW YORK, November 12. Mr Walter Lippmann, probably the most influential writer in the United States, addressing the alumni of Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, on Armistice night, said the ideal of world peace was not attained, but he saw the possibility of keeping wars localised if Great Britain and the United States were able to agree on a common policy of neutrality. A nation which was unwilling to use force to preserve peace had as the only alternative to devote its efforts to confining possible future wars to the locality where they begin. "If we cannot prevent wars, as 15 years ago we dreamed we might do, then we must try to confine the limit of wars as prudent statesmen of the past always tried to do." Mr Lippmann said that any war in which Great Britain was neutral would, from an American point of view, be a "local war"; but if Britain were involved "we can be neutral only by yielding our rights or by challenging British sea power. But with Britain neutral the overwhelming might of the world's naval armaments and the world's seaborne commerce would be on the side of neutral as against belligerent rights. "In short, neutrality is a safe and indeed a practicable policy only if it 'is the common policy of Great Britain and America. I do not see how anyone who wishes America to stand aside in the event of war can refuse to admit the inexorable logic that such a policy means seeking an understanding with the British Commonwealth of Nations. "I realise the word 'understanding' is often used as a pretty word for 'alliance,' but I do not mean an alliance and I do not imply one."