PRINCIPLES FOR PEACE-MAKING

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25161, 17 April 1947, Page 7

PRINCIPLES FOR PEACE-MAKING

SUGGESTIONS IN LETTER TO “THE TIMES” (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, April 15. In a letter to “The Times,” Professor Gilbert Murray, Lord Bertrand Ruasell, and Mr Victor Gollancz set out seven principles which, they say, “cannot be neglected without perpetuating the cycle of uneasy peace and ever more frightful war.” First, they say, annexations of any kind are always dangerous, as they inflame riationalistic passions, encourage agitators, and lead to wars of revenge. Second, any attempt to fix an upper limit to the living standards of any section of European peoples must react adversely upon the living standards of the whole of Europe and the world.

Third, nowadays it is foolish to imagine that any reparations, however large, can repair the damage done by war. Excessive reparations must defeat their own object. Fourth, constitutions Imposed from without are unlikely to endure, and to impose one is not consistent with democratic professions. Fifth, while safeguards must be created against a resurgence of Fascism, a law-abiding society cannot be fostered by ticketing millions of people on the score of what they have done and said in the past. A lawabiding society can be fostered only by providing a soil and climate congenial to its growth. Sixth, the re-education of a people must be that people’s own work. Inculcation by a conquering enemy can do nothing but harm. Seventh, when a nation has been defeated the problem is not to make it impossible for “her to do it again.” Such an aim can never be achieved in a world constantly changing. The problem is twofold: first, so to settle with the defeated that they will not be driven by despair or seduced by a prospect of easy success to risk another attempt at war, and, second, to devise means, not of dealing with particular aggressors, for aggressors come and go, but with aggression itself. To concentrate upon the most recent aggressor is to run away from the larger issues.