Sapping the Foundations of Prosperity

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 261, 31 July 1937, Page 1 (Supplement)

Sapping the Foundations of Prosperity

(4 A T the moment there is no more insidious attack being made /% upon the foundations of prosperity and of peace than that I % which is being made by the advocates of economic nationalism X A and of neutrality in case a conflict should break out between two other nations,” says Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler. “There is and can be no economic nationalism without ultimate national suicide and world-wide disaster. There is and can be no neutrality, in the nineteenthcentury sense, without complete and immoral neglect of the highest of national obligations. “The attempt to establish old-fashioned neutrality under new-fashioned conditions will not only do nothing to keep a nation out of war, but it will do much to make it feel most grievously the effects of any war which comes to pass. “In this day and generation progress consists in not overlooking governmental immorality and faithlessness, but in preventing it when possible and in rebuking it when impossible to prevent it. That means genuine world organisation and collective security through the use of an effective world police force. “The wars which most seriously threaten at the moment are, save in

outward form, no longer wars between peoples and their governments: they are wars between fundamental and conflicting philosophies of life and of , public order. What is going on in Spain under the name of civil war proves this. “The democracy which, at the instance of the English-speaking and the French peoples, had been spreading over the Western world is now not only challenged but distinctly checked by the opposing doctrines resting upon a philosophy of compulsion rather than of liberty, which are known as Communism, as National Socialism, and as Fascism. “How, therefore, in such circumstances can a democratic people be indifferent or neutral when a fellow-democracy is forcibly attacked by one of the philosophies of compulsion? In that case, what is being attacked is that democracy’s own outpost, and, if the attack on that outpost be successful, it will be followed by an attack on that democracy itself. Each in its own self-defence must stand together with the other democratic peoples if the ■ attempt be made to submerge any one of them under the waves of a doctrine of compulsion. “Peace, as has been pointed out many times, requires a foundation upon which to rest. It cannot be reached or hoped for unless that foundation be provided, and that foundation has for its corner-stones liberty and justice.”