PEACEFUL SOLUTION

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 35, 11 February 1931, Page 9

PEACEFUL SOLUTION

KEY—DISARMAMENT

HENDERSON'S APPEAL

British Official Wireless. , RUGBY, Bth February. The Foreign Secretary, Mr. Arthur; Henderson, speaking at a disarmament demonstration in London to-night, said that disarmament by international agreement was a definite recognition by all nations that their armies, their navies, and their air forces were matters which concerned, not themselves alone, but other peoples also. It was the acceptance of the imperative obligation that military preparations should no longer be determined by the nations' unrestricted will only, but be part of the general concern of the international community. He emphasised that everything depended upon the manner in which the governments completed the framework which the Preparatory Commission had drawn up. The figures,which the governments inserted in it depended upon, public opinion. ■< ■ : -. If people wanted disarmament they could have it, and the friends of pej.ee had twelve months in which to niofoilisc opinion in favour of a great opportunity which might not recur. If they really drifted, then the next war %ould be incomparably worse thaty\he last. ... . WAR CANNOT BE HUMANISIED. "A military expert has said that in' the last war wo were killing by retail, but next time it would bo done wholesale," he said. "We have surely learned that it is beyond our power to humanise the conduct of modern war. Once war begins, no man and no government can control it. ''..,. "The only way to stop such barbarities is to stop war itself. We may ba very certain that, if war ocerrs, it will bring w^th it a destruction of life on a scale such as we have never imagined —destruction that will enj;ulf,» in all human probability, the very civilisation in which we live." Turning to the strictly economic reasons for the policy for which they stood, Mr. Henderson pointed out that the economic crisis, the grim spectre of unemployment, and the world crisis generally were all part of the aftermath of the last war. Queues of idlo men and the depressed state of industry all represented the victims of war. .EFFECT OF FEAXy OF WAB. The world economic- crisis' could ba coped with only by world action. But world action meant international cooperation on economic questions of every kind, and thiis would never be obtained while polities were founded on the constant feaor of war. Tariff barriers, self -sufficiency, trada prohibitions, and economic nationalism, were all the consequences of conceptions of national interests which had been created by the fear of war. " , Europe to-day was as full of difficult problems as it w«s five years ago. A« the Foreign Minister of a great Power ho declared that disarmament was th« key to their peaceful' solution.