THE WORK FOR PEACE

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21685, 20 January 1936, Page 11

THE WORK FOR PEACE

DEMANDS OF COLLECTIVE!

SECURITY MR EDEN’S FIRST SPEECH AS j FOREIGN SECRETARY I .■ ,t (BRITISH OFFICIAL WIEELESS.) i (Received January 19, 7.50 p.m.) j RUGBY, January 17. ; The Foreign Secretary, Mr R. A. Eden, delivered in his constituency j to-night his first speech on foreign affairs since he succeeded Sir Samuel Hoare. He began with a review of events in the last year, outstanding facts of which were “the emergence once more of a strong Germany claiming for herself the right to rearm, and the emergence of the League of

Nations from a position of somewhat remote respectability to one of vigorous responsibility.” During the last six months, said Mr Eden, he had been often at Geneva for work on the Abyssinian dispute when a false step forward would have strained the anxieties of league members and a false step backward would have dashed their hopes, and yet when somebody had to give a lead. “I am proud to think it was the United Kingdom Government which gave a lead, and that it did so because it knew that behind it stood its own people,” he said. In 1935 collective action by the league was for the first time put to a test, and a very severe test. The success achieved should he neither

exaggerated nor underrated, but there was still much to achieve. “Collective security is not to be won easily. It will require unremitting work and sacrifices from all. “There was on the whole good team work in 1933,” said Mr Eden, “but there must be still better in 1936 and even better in 1937*. There must be no mood of self-complac-ency on our part or on the part of any other member of the league—no resting on laurels, for laurels are not yet won. | “The effort we shall all have to make is a very great one, but I am convinced I am right in saying that the people of this country think it is worth making. The leadership of Great, Britain is no

insignificant (element. Lrtt thore be no faint hearts, but let there be realism. “Immensely Difficult Task” “It is in that spirit,” declared Mr Eden, “that 1 am going to Geneva in a few days’ time, and in that spirit I shall try to approach the immensely difficult task that lies ahead.” Confusion must be avoided, he said; and it would help if the League Council could review the situation ana take stock of recent

events and the point now reached. “We must all try to look beyond the immediate conflict confronting the league and keep a firm hold of a few simple essentials,” lie continued. “1 suggest that two such essentials arc, first, that aggression ought not to be allowed to succeed, and second, that members of the league, acting together, should be so strong and so united that they may bring it home to any aggressor now or in the future, that peaceful negotiation and not aggression is not merely the best but the only successful way of removing I discontent.

“We must go forward in such a way as to make sure that the other nations at Geneva are with us in deed as well as in word, and that we and they together, in pursuing a policy of peace, are taking all the measures necessary to strengthen ourselves so that peace may be secured.

“If the collective peace system is to be effective it must possess strength and elasticity—strength ir L or !^ er that aggression may be effectively discouraged, elasticity m order that some of the causes of war may be removed through the promotion by consent of necessary changes when the time is ripe for them to take place. Road to Peace There are two complementary aspects of security, and the more certainly the system can comprehend them the more firmly will it establish ts own authority and the more surely will it draw others within its orbit. Yet that strength must be dependent upon the extent to which all members of the league, m accordance with their relative capacities, are prepared to play their part. There can be no collecuve system in which the full burden is to be borne by one or two ” Moreover, the effective establishment of a collective peace system was now the only way to an arms agieemenfc by which the burden of world armaments might be reduced. in conclusion the Foreign Secretary said it would be a profound mistake to imagine that the British Government or people were a pro” or “anti” country. Their policy was directed against no individual or nation as such, but as a league member they were bound to be opposed to any violation of the League Covenant.

they would always be found arrayed on the side of the collective system against any Government or people which sought by a return to power politics’ to break up the collective peace system, ignoring the covenant, which provides the ™^ n ery for peaceful settlement. . lhe British people desired nothing so ardently as peace, and founded their policy on membership jf the League of Nations as the best hope of achieving it.”