FRIDAY, MAY 9, 1924. IF POSSIBLE

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 109, 9 May 1924, Page 6

FRIDAY, MAY 9, 1924. IF POSSIBLE

'" Addressing the annual convention of the United States Chamber of Commerce at Cleveland, Sir Esme Howard, who has recently succeeded Sir Auckland Geddes as the British Ambassador at Washington, was reported yesterday to have said that " only by the united efforts of business men, statesmen, educationists, and journalists throughout the world to create and produce the will to peace can recovery and. reconstruction of a thorough and abiding kind be achieved." The priority thus accorded to the business men among the instruments of peace can hardly have been recognised in the production of the wonderful scheme for the reconstruction of the world which was also cabled to us from America at the same time. The British suggestions to the Women's League for' P^eace and' Freedom betray in their narrow scope the characteristic weakness of their source; they are modest and practical, attempting nothing more drastic than, a revision of the Treaty of Versailles. . But the French proposal, though diverging even more widely from the particular kind of " thorough " which is at present, finding favour with the nation, is as sweeping as revolutionary, as triumphant in its subordination of fact to' theory, as resolute in its determination to follow abstract logic to the last ditch or the highest pinnacle as the most brilliant achievements of the revolutionary genius of France. ■ What the French delegation^ to the Women's League for Peace and Freedom proposes is something which would supersede'the League of Nations just as thoroughly as the League of Nations has superseded the Holy Alliance, and incidentally it would apparently scrap most of the existing machinery, whether national or international, for the government of the world. This happy consummation is to be achieved by a mere stroke or two of the-international."pen constituting a'J'world-wide league of peoples, representing consumers and producers of all countries, to have legislative, executive, and judicial powers, under which it could outlaw and revise treaties." A Reform Bill which enacted by a single clause that " the millennium. shall be, and the same is hereby, established " would hardly take one's breath away more thoroughly, than the sublime-sweep of what we'may regard as the governing clause of the World Beconstruction Bill which-has now gone into Committee at Washington.- The more detailed specifications of the proposed League's power which are supplied by the same message are not of so severely practical a character as to abate one's wonder:— ' j

It would ■ command no armed forces, but would rely on public opinion for the enforcement of its laws'. It would bo empowered to solve the question of reparations and inter-Allied debts, internationalise currencies, weights and measures, abolish all Customs tariffs, and internationalise all sources of powsr and raw materials, giving every country access, if possible. A world- charter foi; labour would be compiled.

The proposals have been referred by the Conference to a committee "to obtain the formal opinions of the different. national sections," but to a very large extent this procedure is a mere formality, for we are told that the support of most of the European sections ,of the. League is already; assured. Unless, therefore, Europe is outvoted by the American Continent, in which such pillars of the world's peace as Haiti and Salvador will presumably have equal power with the United States, the proposals will .be carried; There will still be a few more formalities to be got out of the way before the scheme can be effectively adopted as the law of the A world—formalities which it might require the waging of several wars of a more terrible character than the last and the lapse of a few centuries to remove. But in the meantime the world is deeply indebted to the Women's League of Peace and Freedom for quite the best addition to " the public stock of harmless pleasure" since that delightfully novel hoax of two or three months ago. When a sympa-' thetic draftsman has got to work on the proposals and reduced them to legislative .form for submission to the Parliaments of the world, we shall be in possession of a masterpiece •of humour which may make Shakespeare and Swift and "Erewhon" Butler, and all the other immortal humorists, look to their laurels.

In the cabled precis of these world-shaking—and side-shaking— proposals we detect but a single serious defect, and that comes almost at the very end—a sort of Achilles heel of weakness. After providing ths.new League of Peoples with "legislative, executive, and judicial powers" which will apparently take precedence of all such powers at present in existence, arid are expressly stated to enable it " to outlaw and revise all treaties"; after - empowering the League to ride roughshod over all the armies of the world, to scrap all its navies,, and, having put them all down, to compel them to "stay put" without the aid df armed forces and in sole reliance on the irresistible power of a pious pubhc- opinion; and after adding the power' to internationalise cur-

rencies and to abolish all Customs tariffs—after all this irresistible display of force, a single touch of human weakness comes in to spoil the whole business. The last power of all is the power "to internationalise all sources of power and raw materials, giving every country, if possible, access to them." It is those wretched words " if possible " that betray the cloven hoof of human weakness and dash all our hopes. After- triumphantly bidding defiance to the possibilities from the very outset, why balk at the last small hurdle and pander to scepticism and despondency with a doleful "if possible" 1 Delete this encouragement to pessimism, and the, scheme will be as near perfection as any human scheme can be. Yet when it has received its finishing touches, an unsympathetic world may consider the promoters ripe for another investigation by the Senate, or even for a medical inquiry. ■ , :