Collective Security

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 162, 5 April 1938, Page 13

Collective Security

Sir, —The cabled report in your issue of Thursday last on British policy is interesting and informative. One of the most remarkable, features is the statement of the Archbishop of Canterbury that “he had most reluctantly come to the conclusion that collective security was impossible.” And another equally outstanding feature was that Lord Robert Cecil, who followed the archbishop, did not chide him for his view nor champion this fetish of collective security; perhaps one should say he did not continue his championship of collective security.

Among the persistent advocates of a so-called peace policy, what these two eminent men say to-day others will probably think to-morrow and say the day after. For more than 10 years these people pinned their faith to disarmament, but after th© invasion of Manchuria and the lukewarmness of the various disarmament conferences the propaganda was shifted from disarmament to collective security. I am not condemning either disarmament or collective security; far from it. They are both excellent things, hut to suggest that in this naughty and quarrelsome world, with seven or eight Great Bowers controlling enormous armaments,. some of which Powers hold vast areas of territories, which territories the others ardently covet, disarmament is likely to be achieved or that any useful measure of collective security is likely to be achieved is unwarranted optimism, or else it is pure delusion. —I am, etc., HOPEFUL. Wellington, April 2.