BRITAIN—PEACE SPONSOR

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22435, 23 June 1938, Page 11

BRITAIN—PEACE SPONSOR

Qualifications And Disadvantages LORD HALIFAX OUTLINES POLICY AIMS (BRITISH OFFICIAL WIRELESS.) (Received June 22, 10 p.m.) RUGBY, June 21. Addressing a meeting at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, observed that growing appreciation of the cataclysmic effect of war and of the fact that it unsettled at least as much as it settled, and that its influence on human affairs was rather disruptive than decisive, had given rise to increased public interest in foreign policy. There was a desire among the British people, he thought, to make the most effective contribution it could to a settlement of the present world anxieties, and he cited with warm approval Mr Cordell Hull’s words that “national isolation is not a means to security but rather a fruitful source of insecurity.” Drawing a balance-sheet of British qualifications and disqualifications for making an effective contribution in foreign affairs, Lord Halifax put on the debit side the iong experience of national unity, together with a lack of imagination and some failure to understand the thought and actions of other nations arising from the preceding point. On the credit side, he put certain positive qualities, and first among these was British respect for law, founded upon the conviction that no social life was tolerable or possible on other terms. This the British held to be as true of nations as it was of individuals. The first necessity of an ordered life was that the settlement of differences by force should be abolished and replaced by settlement through some process according to law. Second, there was the British recognition that law must rest upon consent, and, third, the fact that by its development of democracy the British people had trained themselves in the practice and atmosphere of toleration. The British people would have no use for a world society in which the law would be expected to be the obedient handmaid of lawless force. What they had to seek was a way of orderly and progressive change. Lord Halifax agreed that the problem was easier to state than to solve, and said it would never be solved except by mutual confidence in good intentions. The world therefore would find British policy repeatedly emphasising what united nations instead of what divided them, and for the same reason would note that the British were not interested to secure a so-called diplomatic success, if by doing so they prejudiced the attainment of their main objective—appeasement and peace. .

Referring to the League of Nations, Lord Halifax said that events had made the full application of the Covenant impracticable today, but there was no reason why a country like Britain, which believed the spirit of the Covenant to be the right spirit in international affairs, should not continue to practise that spirit in its dealings with other nations. That it was trying to do.