EUROPE'S DILEMMA MR. NORMAN ANGELL'S SOLUTION.

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 89, 14 April 1923, Page 12

EUROPE'S DILEMMA

MR. NORMAN ANGELL'S SOLUTION.

Addressing a crowded meeting in Manchester recently, says the "Manchester Guardian," Mr. Norman Angell said that if Western society was at this moment in such a state of., chaos that he for one doubted very much whether we were going to save. this, civilisation, it was not only because of our system of capitalism but because of our ihoral outlook on the problem of nationalism. Never in our history had this country been so powerful so far as physical force could give a nation power, and yet we had nearly two million unemployed. Why was it that we were not seeing much of the indemnity? Because there' was only one way the indemnity could be paid," and that was by the export of German goods. There was no other way whatever. There were fields of co-oper-ation in ■ this complex modern society of; ours, and that co-operation would take place as the result of a spirit of agreement or it would not take place at all. It could not be compelled. To the degree to which a victorious country furnished power to a beaten country to do what it demanded, to that degree it furnished tlie beaten country with power to resist what was demanded. The two countries had got to come to, a bargain. That, Mr. Angell said, was the dilemma which was ruining Europe to-day. Where was the morality in the. nationalism which was behind all this misery? M. Poincare said, "We demand that Germany shall pay us this great indemnity, but she must not recover economically." In this matter France was her own judge, jury, and executioner—Germany had no rights, at all. France deprived the debtor to the means of payment, then demanded that she should pay, and then inflicted illimitable punishment because she did not pay_. Another speaker said it was important that the I.L.P. should not" neglect the economic field. The membership of many trade unions had of late greatly deer-eased. That, he was glad to say, had not happened in the spinning section of the cotton' industry, but in other sections of that industry there had been a loss of from 50,600 to 60,000 members. When working men and working women 'began to lose their faith in trade union organisation it was a serious-business for the worker.

The chairman said our statesmen today were mouthing the phrases which Mr. Norman Angell coined before the. war. What Mr. Angell had said in regard to war had come true, and to-day he was entitled- to a 40 horse-power "I told you so." ,The reason why we were now in-i such a mess was that the world had .taken the.advice of Horatio Bottomley rather than that of Mr. Norman Angell. (Applause.) . ....