Evening Post. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1933. WELTER OF UNREST AND STRIFE

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 40, 17 February 1933, Page 6

Evening Post. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1933. WELTER OF UNREST AND STRIFE

•Th& two bright spots in the world s news today are the two sixes with which the English cricketers concluded their dreary second innings at Brisbane yesterday and recovered the ."Ashes" by a well-de-served victory. Otherwise one may survey mankind from China to Peru, from Geneva to Jehol, from Miami to Manchuria, and from Berlin'to Bogota, only to discover that there is no gleam of light anywhere' since "universal darkness buries all." One trouble follows indeed so hot upon the heels of another, that it is not easy to take them all in. In the great days of the Seven Years' War when Britain was mapping out her Empire by a wonderful series of successes on sea and land, Horace Walpole was able to say, •We are forced to ask every morning what victory there is, for fear of missing one. Under the conditions' of today he might have been . glad if the headlines had left him. a chance of missing a large proportion of the news. There are' fortunately neither British- victories nor British defeats to record, for Britain is not at war,, but one of her legacies.from the victories, of Plassey and Minden, of Quebec arid Quiberon, is a' responsibility for the peace of the world which is unequalled by that of any other nation. In .the present welter of unrest and strife the strength of Britain's diplomacy is still the world's main hope, and though the strain continues to show it shows no sign of cracking. Though China and Manchuria make by far the largest, the.-most deep-seated, • and the most dangerous spot upon the world's news, the small and isolated trouble of Colombia and Peru is technically more serious, because it has culminated in war. Within the last eighteen months Japan and China have been engaged in heavy fighting in Manchuria, in Shanghai, and finally in Jehol, without a declaration of war, but the two South American Republics appear to have now supplied a different but equally striking illustration of the niceties of modern diplomacy. The military measures of both parties, followed by the action of the Colombian Government in ordering its Minister at Lima to demand his passports and in extending the same courtesy to the personnel of.the Peruvian Legation at Bogota, will hardly be construed by the most benevolent inter- • preters at Geneva as compatible with a state of peace, nor" do the parties appear_ to have taken that view. The .aerial- bombardment of a Colombian gunboat .in the Putumayo Eiver <says our report from Bogota), and the TecaptuTe by the Colombians of the town of Tarapaea fanned into open, warfare, on^ Tuesday the' - hostilities which had been smouldering for months between Peru and Colombia over the border city, of Leticia. • Yet both these States were ,at the. beginning of last year and, so far as we know, still are, members of the League of Nations, and neither of them appears to have found in the Covenant any obligation to keep'the peace, or to await the awatd of the arbitrators or the report of the Council prescribed by its provisions before going to war. If they are still members of the League, they have agreed to take a shorter cut to war than Japan has taken and to dispense with any flimsy pretext. In the reported cause of quarrel between these , South American States there is an ironical symbolism which mi^ht well have been designed to mock the aims of the belligerents'and the hopes .of the League. The name of the. border city over which Colombo and Peru, after quarrelling for months, are now at war is Leticia, which,'if we interpret it correctly, means "happiness" or "joy." If our report from Bogota, instead of opening a narrative of plain-fact, had been the opening of a parable written to satirise the delusions of war, the name could riot have been belter chosen. Happiness is the Blue Bird in pursuit of which nations have usually gone to war, and it is mostly misery that they have got out of it. The League of Nations was formed to show them a better way, but the moral of the World War of which it was the outcome appears to be losing its force, and the economic consequences of the War are taking the world back to the spirit which produced, it and away from that which established the League in order to make a repetition impossible. Except on the Japa-

nese delegation there can surely be nobody at Geneva who has changed front in this way, but the altitude of some of the smaller, and therefore more irresponsible, nations to Japan has occasionally betrayed a dangerous misunderstanding of the functions of the League. The League is not a fighting body. It cannoL make war in Manchuria or anywhere else. Its duty is to keep the peace between its members, to restore it when broken, but its powers are limited to good advice. Lord Lylton speaks for the League, for its most powerful member, and for substantially all the others when he says that he is "opposed to going to war to enforce." Two others of Britain's great peacemakers are helping to keep the hopes of the world alive. Sir John Simon, who has been one of the strongest influences at Geneva, in endeavouring to bring Japan to reason, has surveyed international affairs in a speech at Southampton with which we have no space to deal. Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald, long regarded as the mainstay of European peace, has now received a most hopeful and flattering compliment' from America. Both the President and the President-elect are desirous to see him before the formal opening of the war debt negotiations next month, and. the latter, upon whom the main burden will fall, is particularly anxious about it. The Washington correspondent, of "The Times? tells us that Mr. Roosevelt is satisfied that the only escape from the world's economic troubles is through "the frankest and fullest Anglo-American co-operation," and that a personal talk with the British Prime Minister is the best way to achieve i.t. The correspondent adds the very grave words:— The truth is that only a thin veil of popular complacency exists between America and disaster. Mr. Mac Donald must judge the gravity of tho American, crisis on the spot. Mr., Roosevelt can only meet the crisis if an Anglo-American deadlock is -averted, and he can only help Britain if Britain helps him. 'Amid all its dangers the world has much to be thankful for. By a few feet Mr. Roosevelt escaped the assassin's bullet at Miami yesterday. Mr. Mac Donald's frail .health has survived the perilous strain to which he has exposed it by his continuous labours in the cause of peace. And now the co-operation of these two men promises as much for the safety of the world as most of its other statesmen put together.,,