The Press THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1942 War Aims

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23811, 3 December 1942, Page 4

The Press THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1942 War Aims

In his review of the war situation Mr Churchill devoted one sentence to the problems of peace. Should the war in Europe end first, as he ventured to prophesy it would, then Allied strength would instantly be swung to the Pacific and against Japan. Meanwhile, “we should be “ engaged with the United States of “America and our Russian allies “and those of the United Nations “ concerned in shaping the interna- “ tional future and the national set- “ tlements which must be devised if “ the free life of Europe is to rise “ again.’’ The “ News-Chronicle,” the New Zealand Press Association’s special correspondent in London reported yesterday, has welcomed this reference to the Allies’ “ collaboration in the tasks of “ peace,” since Mr Churchill has previously paid little attention to “ this integral aspect of the war “ effort.” Yet it can hardly be said to mark any real advance in the statement of war aims and peace aims. It still leaves the political future of Europe to be considered when the war in Europe is won; it still leaves Germans and Italians and the peoples under their heel to guess at the principles which will rule those “ national settlements ” and their place and part and hope in a new European order, not Hitler's. So far as the Germans and Italians are concerned, it loaves unused one weapon which might help to shorten the war: it does nothing to break down a will to resist which is fortified by desperation. This reluctance to hold out to Europe any sketch of its political future has been attributed, reasonably enough, to the difficulty of foreseeing the conditions to be met and the danger of entering upon premature commitments. Nevertheless, although the difficulty and danger are not less, much more has been said about Allied plans for collaboration in the military and economic fields. It is not an acceptable proposition that the principles of a political settlement in Europe are too difficult and dangerous to be discussed and defined, though their detailed application may be; still less acceptable, that there is nothing to be gained by dealing as openly with the political problems of Europe’s future as with the military and economic factors in its security. It has also been suggested, much less reasonably, that the Atlantic Charter answers the need for a statement of political war aims and peace aims. The truth is that the Atlantic Charter lapses into uncertainty, as a political document, at the very point where a bold and clear statement of principle is most needed. Mr Churchill and Mr Roosevelt, for the nations they lead, disavowed territorial aims, undertook that no frontiers should be redrawn without popular consent, upheld the principle that every people must be free to choose its own form of government, and promised to restore independence and full sovereign rights to every State now in subjection. But this last pledge promises too much, if it is an unconditional promise to restore independence even where it has in the past been abused and on the terms which have made its abuse possible. It promises too little, if it promises to restore, unchanged, a conception and a system of full national sovereignty which, as the “ Economist ” said last year, “has wrought more “ havoc in the recent life of man “than any other single principle.” It will be necessary to guard humanity against those crimes, in the name of the sovereign State, that deny and destroy the common liberties of its citizens. If this is to become, in the phrase of Mr Henry Wallace, the United States VicePresident, “ the century of the “ common man,” his fundamental rights in every country will have to become an international responsibility; and to acknowledge this now, among the Allied Nations’ war aims and peace aims, would not be difficult or dangerous. Second, it will be necessary to guard humanity against those greater crimes which, in the international field, are at least facilitated by the doctrine of full—-which means unfetterednational sovereignty. It cannot be too soon to acknowledge that the Allied Nations do not intend to tolerate international anarchy.

There is in Point 8 [of the Atlantic Charter] a reference to a “more permanent system of security.” But no inkling is given- of what that system is, except that it is apparently to be underpinned by the maintenance of unilateral disarmament. This will not do Unilateral disarmament there must, and will, be. But if nothing more than a revised version of the balance of power is envisaged, this means, quite simply, that the combined efforts of constructive Anglo-American statesmanship in the last century are to be abandoned. It is true that the League experiment did not fulfil the warm hopes it roused; but that is no reason for swinging to the opposite extreme. The League failed because there was no will and no power behind its sanction. Now there is to be power, and perhaps more will, but no League. One League experiment has failed, it is true; but history is strewn with the wrecks of power systems. There can be no lasting solution of Europe s anarchy on the basis of unilateral disarmament alone.

The quotation is from the “ Eco- “ nomist,” again. It is an unanswerable argument for a declaration that Allied power will be responsibly used to create and maintain “ 1 system of international equity “ and law/’ by which national sovereignty, in its political exercise, will be limited and controlled.