Evening Post. FRIDAY, MARCH 22, 1929. SOVIET VOICES PROPHESYING WAR

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 67, 22 March 1929, Page 10

Evening Post. FRIDAY, MARCH 22, 1929. SOVIET VOICES PROPHESYING WAR

America, says Trotsky, "intends to deprive Britain of her naval supremacy." The United States naval policy, writes the American foreign affairs expert, Mr. F. H. Simonds, is "directcJ ngainst the traditional British blockade." So far, the two doctors do not fundamentally disagree. An American navy that would he strong enough to prevent Britain from seizing cargoes of American cotton (or other war munitional material) consigned to a neutral European country that borders on another country at war with Britain would be strong enough, to "deprive Britain of her naval supremacy"—for that supremacy surely connotes the very "British blockade" which Mr. Simonds specifies as being the first victim of United States navy-build-ing. But although both Trotsky and. Simonds walk hand-in-hand to the point at which they ascribe to the American naval parity school a fixed intention to hold in their fist enough hitting power to veto the blockade, the paths of the prophets then diverge. Trotsky says: "War within ten years." Simonds has not said that. There is a gap between the building of a blockade-preventing fleet and war. There is even a gap between building such a fleet and its actual use for blockade-preven-tion. If London knows that Washington is determined to push through "neutral cargoes" of the character stated above, and has the naval power to do so, then it becomes the task of British diplomacy to prevent such a situation arising, either by avoiding a war in which "neutral cargoes" from America are of vital importance, or by incurring hostilities only in circumstances which bind the United States, expressly or morally, not to precipitate another world war on the plea of the inviolability of sea-borne munitional commodities. Suppose that Soviet Russia declared war on Britain to-morrow, or, by invading Afghanistan and bombarding Peshawar, forced Britain to declare war. And suppose that American munitional cargoes passed through the North Sea and Baltic sea-lane, under British naval guns, to Latvia, Esthonia, or Finland, for transhipment into Russia. Would Washington demand that the British navy let those cargoes pass? Would Washington make war against Britain (thus in reality making Avar for Soviet Russia, not "recognised" in Washington) because of naval search or seizure? Would Washington take that extreme step even if United States naval parity were an actual fact?

Trotsky, says that his war-within-ten-years "may not begin between England and America, but both will certainly eventually be involved." In other words, someone in Europe, or someone in both Europe and Asia, for preference Soviet Russia, might begin the war. Russia sits on the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Pacific, and is within striking distance of the Persian Gulf, and therefore, as a belligerent, would be in a position to invite from a strong naval enemy a very widespread and carefully organised blockade. In some of these much-used waters, perhaps in all of them, friction between neutrals and a naval belligerent like Britain would arise; and in this way, Trotsky calculates, Britain and the United States would come to blows. As already intimated, his calculation assumes the worst concerning British diplomacy and also American diplomacy. Still, the fact must not be lost sight of that if the United States is building against "the traditional British blockade" (and Mr. Simonds says^it is) a two-continent Power in touch with three oceans will have a rare opportunity for mischief-making—an opportunity which becomes doubly significant when the world possesses, for the first time in its history, a Government whose hand is against all other Governments, and whose objective is the destruction of capitalistic society.' The idea of producing an Anglo-American clash is not new in Trotsky's mind. He was inclined to elaborate it at least as long ago as 1925, at which time he was still a force in the Soviet. In that year he wrote:—

The "co-operation" of America and Great Britain is tho momentarily peaceful form in which Britain's increasing capitulation to America will take place. This "co-operation" may, at this or that moment, be directed against a third Power; none tho less, the fundamental antagonism of tho world is that between Britain and America, and all other antagonisms, severer at a given moment and more immediately threatening, can be understood and evaluated only on the basis of the antagonism between Britain and America. AngloAmerican "co-oporation" is preparing the way for a war just as a period of reform prepares for a period of revolution. Just the very fact that, in taking the way of reforms (i.e., compulsory accommodations with America), Britain vnV abandon one position after another, must ultimately compel her to offer resistance.

In other words, Britain will make concessions by agreeing to pay the debt to America, by abandoning Japanese alliances, by failing to complete Anglo-French naval compromises, even (if naval limitation finally fails) by surrendering some of the power of search and seizure at sea, but yet (contends Trotsky) Britain will have to fight America in the end.

It is ju9t as important that the

people of the British Empire should know what Trotsky is saying about Anglo-American war as it was that they should know in 1907-14 what Bernhardi and other influential and widely read Germans were saying about Anglo-German war. Bernhardi wrote in effect that the Dominions j would not fight; he almost said 'uiat at the first blast of the German trumpet the walls of the British Empire Jericho would fall to the ground. His books are dead now, but they performed in their day notable service to Britain and disservice to Germany. Writings like Bernhardi's and Trotsky's carry their values between the lines; though the lines themselves may be unsound, or foolish, or iniquitous, they are a clue to certain mental conditions oversea and certain possibilities to be guarded against. There is a big gap, of course, between the Bernhardi teaching and the Trotsky leaching in that the material political-commercial inducements to war between Germany and her western neighbours were incomparably greater than they are as between the United States and Britain; while the moral-spiritual restraints upon war, where warfare has become a religion, as it was in Prussia, are incomparably less than between two people of the same social stock, language, and culture. For that reason, Bernhardi commanded a hearing that will not be given to Trotsky; and the explosion of Bernhardi's credible theories promises well for the failure of Soviet prognostications in which the evil wish is father to the evil thought. Yet the name of Trotsky is sufficient to command a certain reading public on both sides of the Atlantic, and the wider distribution of his poison will automatically generate its own antidote. From his picture of Anglo-American war, in so far as it is credible at all, Britons and Americans will recoil. There is no political or territorial domination to fight about, no Frederician or Napoleonic or Bismarckian legacy, nothing to fight about that is worth while. Also, the specifying of a ten-years limit will add to the cautionary value of Trotsky's alarmist prophecy, while tying the prophet down to the decisive judgment of results. Whatever may be the issue of the naval building and the blockade question, Trotsky's malediction can hardly fail to do good. There is no inevitableness about it unless the two leading civilised people should be guilty of the incredible, open-eyed folly of gambling with their civilisation for a bagatelle.