Evening Post. SATURDAY, JULY 8, 1922. FAITH IN THE LEAGUE

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 7, 8 July 1922, Page 6

Evening Post. SATURDAY, JULY 8, 1922. FAITH IN THE LEAGUE

Since ex-President Wilson was struck down at the crisis of the great campaign in which he was endea.vouring to persuade his countrymen to accept the League of Nations, Lord Robert Cecil has been its most conspicuous champion. In the League of Nations Union and in the League itself, in the House of Commons, in the press, and on the platform his services to the cause have been unrivalled. His persistent advocacy has kept the claims of the League constantly before the Government and the public, and has been equally valuable in the exposition of principles, which is the idealist's strong point, and in the working out of those details, which are usually beyond his reach. Though on the Assembly of the League of Nations Lord Robert Cecil has represented South Africa and not the British Empire, he has carried a weight out of all proportion to his official status. At the First Assembly he was far surpassed in eloquence by . M.' Viviani and others, but eloquence and business are different and often contradictory things, and in his contributions to the business Lord Robert Cecil was second to none. In the Second Assembly the present Earl Balfour came to the front, and Mr. Harold Temperley can give him no higher praise than by saying that "Mr. Balfour, by commonsense, was the weightiest voice in the whole Assembly, and carried more influence even than Lord Robert Cecil"

The reasons advanced by Mr. Temperley for giving the leading delegate of the greatest Empire in the world priority in this respect over a private citizen representing in a detached and almost academical fashion a small portion of it are of a kind that do Lord Robert Cecil nothing but honour.

The latter (i.e., Lord Robert) was, says Mr. Temperley, indefatigable in debate, in proposing motions and amendments, and in raising to a higher level every debate in which he took part. Probably on Committees his influence was still greater, and, indeed, all-per-vading. Yet his influence was, and remained, personal. Mr, Balfour seemed to carry weight beyond any other voice rawed in the Assembly, because his personal opinion expressed the policy, not only of a long-experienced statesman, but of a great Empire. '

The honour that Lord Robert Cecil derives from this comparison is increased by the fact that it is largely through his own efforts that he has qualified his cousin to supersede him. It is Lord Robert's advocacy of the League of Nations that has kept the British Government up to the mark, and Lord Balfour probably needed his help as badly as any other Minister. Lord Robert Cecil is by nature an idealist. Lord Balfour's genius is so essentially critical that even his defence of revealed religion has been said to have its foundations laid in scepticism. Like M. Clemenceau, Mr. Balfour—he had not a peerage in those days—doubtless had often to remind himself that he really did believe in the League of Nations, and Lord Robert Cecil's eager faith must have helped these reminders very much.

But in such a case " the reciprocity is not all on one side." If scepticism is warmed by faith, faith in its turn learns from scepticism the difference between the practicable and the impracticable, and the lines along which effort may be most profitably directed. In Mr. Temperley's study of "The Second Year of the League," from which we have already quoted, the folIpwinir ia gjyen as .one of the " sage

and. pithy utterances " which Lord Balfour contributed to the League's debates:

What, asks Mr. Temperley, could be more complete than his reply to Lord Cecil about disarmament? " General _i6_rn_unent can only be effectual if it is a general disarmament, and a general disarmament is an all-inclusive disarmament.." There was a neat finality about this which even idealists appreciated.

It is very satisfactory to know that among the idealists who appreciated the point was Lord Robert Cecil himself. A cable message which we published on Thursday puts the matter beyond a doubt. The very first clause of the draft Treaty which Lord Robert Cecil has submitted to the Armaments Reduction Commission of the League of Nations now sitting in Paris is as follows:—

_ No reduction proposal shall be effective unless general.

It is clear that Lord Balfour himself could not have condensed his "sage and pithy utterance" on disarmament with greater accuracy than that achieved by the man^at which it was aimed in what he has now made the corner-stone of his disarmament proposals. The emphasis thus laid by Lord Robert Cecil on an essential of any effective scheme of reducing arma/ments comes at a very opportune moment for influencing opinion in New Zealand. The pacifist arguments'by which disarmament has been recently supported have done both the cause itself and the League of Nations with which it is associated much harm. A nation which yielded to these arguments would merely make itself the prey of those which did not. If the Rev. Dr. Gibb's objection to warlike preparations of any kind became general throughout the British Empire, it would not make for peace. The Empire itself would be dissolved, and the' world would be reduced to chaos. The hope of the world is not in the methods of pacifism but in those of the Washington Conference. Had America scrapped her Navy before calling that Conference, her call would have been in vain. Had America and Britain even reduced their navies before the Conference to the limits since agreed upon, then the Conference would have been abortive and Japan would have been free to dominate the Pacific. Our pacifists must press their arguments on other nations as well as our own, and insist upon their all moving together. Otherwise their efforts will make for war instead of peace. The movement must be general and simultaneous. The Balfour-Cecil policy is the only sound one,