Evening Post. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1935. MR. HUGHES WRITES A BOOK

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 112, 7 November 1935, Page 8

Evening Post. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1935. MR. HUGHES WRITES A BOOK

The forms of the Federal Parliament having prevented the Prime Minister (Mr. Lyons) fromjspeaking before Mr. Hughes, the latter's statement, backed' by that \)f the Leader of the Labour Opposition, Mr. Curtin,' stands more or less uncontradicted at time of writing. Judgment on such a one-sided presentation of the facts must necessarily be reserved, but even the ex-parte matter to hand is so interesting as to challenge comment. We have not Mr. Hughes's book, but if he merely said that League of Nations sanctions arc experimental,.he merely said the obvious; and if he wrote (to quote the words of the cablegram) that "it would be most dangerous to rest calmly in the belief that the. League could always preserve peace," the j answer seems to be "Who does?"! The Labour leader comes much closer to controversy when he says that "ani economic blockade, to be effective, must be. backed by'force, which would inevitably lead to war." If "economic blockade" means what the League of Nations is doing, Mr. Curtin's statement, we think, is incapable of proof. His statement covers, arid seeks to arbitrarily decide, the very issue that statesmanship in Britain and Europe has examined, and continues to examine, with scrupulous care. Mr. Curtin dogmatically; says that it means war. . British; and League statesmen undogmatically believe that it does not mean war. Their fight for peace is being pursued partly by means of adroitness, partly in hope, and partly in' faith. Hope and faith cover the "imponderables," which are beyond the pre-judgment of either Europe or Mr. Curtin. Men much closer to the problem than Mr. Hughes or Mr. Curtin, and men of at least equal intellect, calculate as well as hope that the economic handicaps on Italy will be sufficient to wean her from a war of Abyssinian conquest. It is. a weaning process, and half the art must lie in how it is done—which is one reason why we think that Mr. Curtin is incapable of pre-judging it. Mr. Curtin might as well look at a travelling1 motor-car an*d declare that it cannot round the next bend; perhaps it cannot (perhaps its driver does.not deserve to), but still people do not give up motoring. The drivers of the League car have a very difficult job; so more power to them, because they know how to use (and when not to use) power. They have shown no tendency to rush the -bends. If Mr. Hughes wrote a book to say that we must not "rest calmly in the belief that every motor-car will round every bend," he would be J publishing a truism concerning all motoring, and quite applicable in! principle to all foreign policies, whether national or League policies. Therein lies no reason at all why the great experiment - of League of Nations sanctions should not proceed ori its four wheels—peaceful intention, temperate action, wise statecraft, human faith. Of course, if •Mr. Hughes or Mr. Curtin were able to say, and to prove, that the Australian Government had entered into stale secret commitment it ought not to have entered into, their whole position before Parliament and the country would be altered. But no such word is so far cabled—indeed, Mr. Hughes protests that his attitude is "not incompatible with that of the Government." If so, this Hughes war should never have occurred, and is not worth too much notice. Why should a squabble about nothing be allowed to prejudice in the public's eyes the League revival, perhaps the most hopeful sign of the last decade? Perhaps neiv light will, be thrown by the Hughes book and the HughesLyons tabled correspondence, but in the meanwhile this incident seems to he more personal than a matter of principle. The great principle lying latent is how far the United Kingdom Government can intervene in the European system and carry with it the extra-European part of the Empire, particularly the Dominions. From one point of view, it might be feared that.the United Kingdom will be torn between the peace-discipline demands of the Continent and a nonentanglement pull from the Dominions; from another point of view, it could be hoped that, as the price of continued Dominion co-operation, the United Kingdom will tread warily along the League of Nations path, thus confounding hasty critics, and ultimately serving the needs of both Dominions and Europe, by traditional British compromise. Only the dogmatism shining out of Mr. Curtin's pronouncement would impel an observer to affirm, or to negate, cither of these views. But why, at this crisis, should either the inner or the outer Empire despair that the more desirable of the two possibilities _ will be realised? Why be afraid of a struggle for peace? Can either Mr. Hughes or Mr. Curtin offer as an alternative any system of hermetic sealing applicable to a small people in a huge country? Can even the self-contained United States make a permanent success of the strait-jacket which it placed on itself when it made "no help for anybody" 9 principle of statute law? Today the British Empire sees

things actually happening that illustrate the issues stated by M. Andre Siegfried, a French friend of the British Empire, last year. This understanding observer presented a case, and now experience clothes it with relevant facts. But, in contrasting the European Continental pull on British statesmanship with the non-entanglement pull of the extra-European part of the Empire, M. Siegfried was not didactic; he asked a question—a momentous question—and left it unanswered because only time can answer it. Here is a United Kingdom with centripetal forca6 tending to keep it in the European system, and centrifugal outer Empire forces pulling to some extent the other way. Will the Empire be torn asunder, or will the counter forces equalise each other, creating a balanced world? This question will not be satisfactorily answered by assuming League shipwreck and by shirking the peace