YEAR IN RETROSPECT

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 98, 20 January 1936, Page 9

YEAR IN RETROSPECT

Mr. Anthony Eden Reviews Foreign Affairs

A MORE VIGOROUS LEAGUE (British Official Wireless.) Rugby, January 17. The Foreign Secretary, Mr. Anthony Eden, delivered in his constituency I to-night his first speech on foreign affairs since he succeeded Sir Samuel Hoare. He began with a review of events in the past year, outstanding facts of which were “the emergence once more of a strong German claiming for herself the right to rearm, and the emergence of tlie League of Nations from a position of somewhat remote respectability to one of vigorous responsibility.” During the last six months he had been often at Geneva in connection with the Abyssinian dispute when a false step forward would have strained the anxieties of League members and a false step backward would have dashed their hopes, and yet when somebody had to give a lead. "I tint proud to think it was the United Kingdom Government which gave a lead and did so because it knew that behind it stood its own people,” he said. In-1935 for the first time collective action by the League was put to a test, and a very severe test. The success achieved should be neither exaggerated nor underrated, but there was still much to achieve. "Collective security is not to be won easily. It will require unremitting work and sacrifices from all. Great Effort to Come. “There was on the whole good team work in 1935, but there must be still better in 1936 and even better in 1937. There must be no mood of self-com-placency on our part or on the part of any other member of the League—no resting on laurels, for laurels are not yet won. The effort we shall all have to make is a very great one, but I am convinced I am right in saying that the people of this country think it is worth making. The leadership of Great Britain is no insignificant element. Let there be no faint hearts, lint let there be realism. “It is in that spirit,” declared Mr. Eden, "that I am going to Geneva in a few days’ time, and in that spirit I shall try to approach the immensely difficult task that lies ahead.” Confusion must be avoided, and it would help if the League Council could review the situation and take stock of recent events and the point now reached.

"We must all try to look beyond the immediate conflict with which the League is confronted and keep a firm hold of a few simple essentials,” he continued. "I suggest that two such essentials are, first, that aggression ought not to be allowed to succeed, and. second, members of the League, acting together, should be so strong and so united that they may bring it home to any aggressor, now or in the future, that peaceful negotiation and not aggression is not merely the best but the only successful way of removing discontent. We must go forward in such a way as to make sure that the other nations at Geneva are with ns in deed as well as in word, and that we and they together, in pursuing a policy of peace, are taking all the measures necessary to strengthen ourselves so that peace may be secured. Collective Peace System. "If the collective peace system is to bo effective it must possess strength and elasticity—strength in order that aggression may be effectively discouraged, elasticity in order that some of the causes of war may be removed through the promotion by consent of necessary changes when the time is ripe for them to take place. There are two complementary aspects of security, and the more certainly the system can comprehend them the more firmly will it establish its own authority and the more surely will it draw others within its orbit. Yet that strength must he dependent upon the extent to which all members of the League, in accordance with their relative capacities, are prepared to play their part. There can be no collective system in which the full burden is to be borne by one or two.”

Moreover, the effective establish meat of a collective peace system was now the only way to an arms agreement by which tlie burden of world armaments might be reduced. In conclusion, the Foreign Secretary said it would be a profound mistake to imagine that tlie British Government or people were a pro or anti country. Their policy was directed against no individual or nation as such, but as a League member they were bound to be opposed to any violation of the League Covenant. They would always be found arrayed on the-side of the collective system against any Government or people which sought by a return to "power politics” to break up tlie collective peace system, ignoring lite Covenant, which provides tlie ma chinery for peaceful settlement. The British people desired nothing so ardently as peace, and founded their policy on membership of tlie League of Nations as tlie best hope of achieving it.