DESIRE FOR PEACE

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 59, 2 December 1933, Page 9

DESIRE FOR PEACE

Problems of Pacific ALL EYES ON JAPAN Pressure of Population Some of the most urgent problems facing the nations bordering on the Pacific, with their consequent bearing on the world as a whole, were touched upon by the Hon. W. Downie Stewart, in an address delivered to members of the Wellington branch of the Institute of Pacific Relations in the Dominion Farmers’ Institute conference hall last evening. Mr. Stewart gave an interesting review of some of the discussions of the two conferences recently held in Canada, which he attended as a New Zealand delegate—one at Banff, being a conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations, and the other at Toronto, being a conference dealing with the problems of the British Commonwealth. "Some of you may be inclined to doubt the practical value of these conferences, and in fact all international conferences in general,” Mr. Stewart, said. "A cynical observer has said that the only real resolution ever passed at an international conference is a decision to hold another conference. It is true that many of these conferences do not seem very fruitful of immediate results, and very often they seem to revolve in a vicious circle. A notable example of this is the incessant and interminable conferences held for many years past on the problem of - disarmament. International Co-operation. “It is said that if prosperity is to come back to the world we must have peace, but peace depends upon disarmament ; disarmament in its turn depends on security; security depends upon confidence; confidence depends upon guarantees., and so it goes on. But after all there is no other way and no other alternative except a policy of drift, and if that is the only policy the world will drift back into war. We must remember that international co-operation is a matter of recent growth, and the vast complexity of modern affairs renders it imperative that nations should learn to co-operate if peace is to be maintained. “At Banff the subjects discussed were the causes of economic conflict in the Pacific, aud this covered a wide range of items such as tariffs, quotas, and other restrictions, shipping subsidies, currency depreciation, sources of raw material, congestion of population, and so on. But, broadly speaking, one may say that underlying all discussions was the urgent desire for peace. Both the Banff aud Toronto Conferences discussed how best to secure peace, either the peace of the Pacific or peace in Europe aud the world at large. • Problem of Japan. “Behind all the discussions on economic conflict lay the spectre of the danger of armed conflict in the East; naturally the limelight was turned on Japan. The cardinal feature of the problem is that Japan has reached saturation point in population. Professor Uyeda, of Japan, in a paper submitted to the conference, said, ‘to bottle up a growing nation such as the Japanese in narrow islands and to refuse to allow them to expand overseas, is not only unreasonable, but also, to court danger for the world, for if the lack of food and other raw materials should become the cause of suffering, no one can predict a future of internal and external peace; thus the population problem of Japan-is a problem for the world as well as for the Japanese themselves.’ “All the committees of. inquiry at Banff confirmed this statement; first, that the Japanese population is increasing at the rate of over 800,000 a year; secondly, there is no solution by migration for this vast annual increase in population: thirdly, that although Japan is highly industrialised, markets are becoming more difficult every day; and, in short, that no solution appears of the Japanese problem. . . . Where congestion of population exists and the pitiless law of growth is at work, something must happen if no outlet is found. All that the conference could do was to state clearly the facts; it could not find any short-cut remedy; the practical problem is one for diplomats and statesmen. Life and Death at Stake. “The general conclusion may seem depressing when we in New Zealand look across the vast waters of the Pacific from our remote isolation and see great nations faced with immense problems in which, in dim outline against a sombre background, economic conflict threatens to develop into armed conflict because elemental issues of life and death are at stake involving not merely the welfare but the fate and destiny of millions of human beings. It looks as if they are being driven on with all the inexorable fatality of a Greek tragedy. “All the conference discussions revealed clearly this fact, that with the utmost goodwill and International friendship nations may be driven in certain directions by forces that no human being consciously created, and which no human being can control—in short, biological factors are at work, and there are no adequate safeguards against conflict when congestion of population can find no outlet. Nations in some matters may act generously. but basically they act from selfinterest and where their vital interests are at stake the outlook becomes menacing and dangerous.”