A WONDERFUL PANACEA

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 62, 10 September 1924, Page 4

A WONDERFUL PANACEA

As the leading official of the In-ter-Allied Federation of Ex-Sold-iers, General. Sir lan Hamilton is said to be organising a movement to prevent' future wars, and the speech with which he has endeavoured to enlist the British Legion in the movement has attracted the attention it deserves. " Five million • fighting in en would,"'he said, "constitute trie most powerful or-ganisation-on-earth." Five million men—about 30,000 more than the total number recruited in the United-Kingdom during the Great War—might be a powerful organisation indeed, but their * power would depend on what they were organised to>do. Five million fighting men organised to protect the peace of the; world and to suppress any disturbers of it with impartiality and dispatch might conceivably exercise a very salutary power If such trifles as the relations of the organisation to the national Governments immediately concerned and all j the other diplomatic difficulties ■ involved could be. ignored or. overcome. ■An international .armed constabulary live million ■■Rtrouif.Vi.ileilyofl. <;<> ko»?p l-.he peautj wight suppJy the League of

Nationß with just the support that is needed to make its moral force an effective force. But it is not on these lines that the Inter-Allied Federation of Ex-Soldiers is intended to work.

General Hamilton's five million fighting men are to be pledged not to fight. The international police foifce with which he proposes to save us from the international burglars and footpads and murderers is to lie down as one man as soon as trouble threatens. Fire-arms they will never touch, and "By the left—ground batons ! lie down!" may be the nearest approach to a military order that they will ever need to learn. Yet simple as the drill will be and light the responsi- j bilities, the ideal may not prove so! easy to realise as it looks. To find even in war-worn, jaded, dis-! tracted, demoralised, and impoverished Europe five million fighting men who will be too proud to fight but not too proud to crawl and grovel and take cover when .their women and children are needing help will surely be a difficult task. .And even if such a number could be collected and signed on, by what process could their enthusiasm be maintained at the grovel!mg point during the years of peace j that may postpone their opportunity? Peace is a noble ideal, but feroyelling is a poor one, and if i the love of peace can only be inculcated by idealising poltroonery I of this kind it's utter impotence to impose any effective restraint, or even to exercise any appreciable influence, on the temptations and incitements to war is too patent to require argument. General Hamilton is so convinced of the success of his wonderful panacea for war that he does not shrink from sneeritig at the relative futility of what is commonly legarded as the greatest peace agency of our time. " The politicians at Geneva," he says, " are trying to tie up a homicidal maniac with pink ribbons." It is quite a pretty phrase. If in his fighting (lays General Hamilton seemed to be too.eloquent for a soldier it must be admitted that his gift of words is much better fitted to his Dew role. ' But it is open to the despised politicians of the League of Nations to reply that pink ribbons are at least as likely a prescription for a homicidal maniac as hot air and cold feet. It is to ho feared that, though Sir lan Hamilton's eloquence has not deserted him, his common-sense, his logic,' and his practical judgment have completely vanished. The pusillanimous sophistry with which Us justified the abandonment of the Singapore Base will be fresh in our readers' memories. His much more astonishing performance at •the unveiling of the war memorial at Orewe has been less widely circulated. The climax of .this great effort was as foliows:—

So long as they were still tmveilin<r memonals there w as a tendency to say now tl t Y ould t al1 ■■ h™ • been slaves Ihl TTniLfe7 tOC"U? ufc *°B'eth« with ™ 1^ IV- ted States. Wlio dared say what would hav-6 happened ? . IrnamiVp af the British Cabinet of July-luS 1914-vacillating as they were-Low"n to have been-had been vouchsafed a pro ninth orr," ° thoS° there «PO« the puilh ot-Crewe's memorial, inscribed Wll S°r? ly n. ames thafc one could hardly stick a. pin in between them. Would John Burns and .John Morley have been the only two to shrink back irom the suicide of a generation ? The suicide not of a generation but oi" the British Empire, and the disappearance, inter alia, of New. Zealand as a free British community would ■■■ have been the inevitable outcome of-'the-craven and cowardly surrender which General Hamilton suggests should have been our answer to the Kaiser's threat. It is a scandal, and a shame that at the consecration of a memorial of our heroic dead their memory should be insulted by such pes^ tilent stuff as this.