NATIONALISM OR INTERNATIONALISM?

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 111, 4 February 1935, Page 8

NATIONALISM OR INTERNATIONALISM?

Giving evidence before the Senate Agricultural Committee in the United States, Mr. Cordell Hull, Secretary of State, made a strong plea for economic internationalism to counteract evaporating world trade, the outcome of nationalist policies. The withdrawals of Japan and Germany from the League of Nations, as well as the failure of the Economic and Disarmament Conferences, have revealed the extent to which States, in spite of the League Covenant and all the other pacts to which they have become parties, continue to regard their own national self-interest as the supreme law of statecraft. . Over the world as a whole it is an undoubted fact that nationalist feeling has been growing faster than the sense of internationalism, and that the economic depression has given an impetus to the imposition of tariffs, quotas and embargoes. The situation for the future is beyond measure discouraging for those who understand that the policy of national isolation involves both the impoverishment of the peoples through exaggerated economic nationalism and the abandonment of any constructive attempt to check the most dangerous of the forces that are making for war. If each great Power plays only for its own hand, and the great Powers are divided into those that are in aggressive mood and those that are keeping quiet in the hope of not being involved, the outlook is grim indeed for the smaller countries which are not in a position to stand up alone to a powerful aggressor or to hold aloof under arms To a considerable extent in these circumstances the smaller Powers are induced to enter into pacts that shall be at least formidable enough lo be let alone. But the difficulty of holding such blocs together b that these smaller States suffer from just the same jealousies and fears as the larger States.