WARNING WORDS

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 154, 28 December 1936, Page 8

WARNING WORDS

BRITISH INSECURITY

RE-ARMAMENT OF NATIONS

FACTS OF SITUATION

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, December 2. "A dangerous conspiracy of silence" as to the true position of the insecurity in which the British Comomnwealth of Nations finds itself today, despite the speed of re-armament, is alleged by the "Round Table," in its December issue. For that reason it has felt "bound" to put certain facts before its readers, feeling "convinced that the nations of the Commonwealth will come to wise decisions, if they know the facts, but only if they are told the facts." This it does in a striking article entitled "Danger Signals for the Commonwealth." The first thing to realise, it says, is that the League of Nations as a system of universal security has completely broken down, and that although the League can still do an immense amount to promote world peace it cannot give security to its members through the universal and automatic obligations of' Articles 10 and 16 of the Covenant. "Security now depends upon armaments, and upon far more explicit military undertakings between individual States than are contained in the Covenant. "The fundamental reason for this breakdown of collective security is that the Covenant leaves intact the full national sovereignty of its members. That, as the experience of every league of Sovereign States has proved, makes inevitable four weaknesses. A league of sovereign States can seldom, if ever, agree about important issues, and there can be no method of arriving at a decision by a majority vote. It is unable to alter the status quo in important respects. ... It is unable to abate economic nationalism. ... If a League of sovereign States attempts to coerce one of its larger and more powerful members the instrument that in the last resort it must use is war, for that is. the only way in which a powerful Government can be coerced against its will." . . The next points discussed by the "Round Table" are the : increasing antagonism between Fascism and Communism together with the effect of national sovereignty in producing an economic and armaments crisis. "Both Europe and the Far East today are becoming increasingly gripped by these two forces—the struggle between Communism and Fascism and the effect of the anarchy of national sovereignties in dislocating economic life and in producing armaments and war. Of these the difficulties caused by national sovereignty are the more formidable, because it is in the social disorder created by economic nationalism that the struggle between Communism and Fascism reaches its greatest intensity. THE PRESSURE IN EUROPE. . "The pressure, too., is far greater in Europe, for the reason that in Europe, in an area which, if Russia be excluded, is not much bigger than half the size of the United States, no less than 25 sovereign States are trying to exist, wife tariffs to the skies and armed to the teeth. That is why,the pressure, both in the Communist-Fascist struggle and in the competition in armaments, is there at its maximum. ' Indeed it seems clear that the status quo in Europe cannot long continue. By some means, by explosion or otherwise, a breacli in these.compartments will be made." Although it is noted that there.is a profound antagonism between Communism and Fascism and therefore between Russia on the one side, and Germany and Japan and possibly Italy on the other,. it is considered doubtful whether either side would press that antagonism to the point of war because of the risks involved. "The more serious danger of war arises from the strains caused by that competition in the armaments of sovereign States which is hourly increasing in intensity, and which, unless it can be relaxed, must end in explosion. Already Japan and Italy have sought to relieve what they believe to be their own shortage of room. . . . Germany is now actively putting forward the demand for the return of her colonies. She has laid the foundations for an adequate re-armament through an expenditure reputed to amount to n- less than £1,500,000,000 during the last two or three years. . ~ . There ccn be no permanent relief to the internal ■ pressures . that drive Germany towards huge armament expenditure and a provocative • foreign policy except through a revival of her external trade—a problem that involves not merely the economic aspects of the colonial question but the whole economic and financial policy of the Third Reich and of the countries with which she trades." IN THE EVENT OF WAR. After reviewing the armaments programmes of the various nations, and noting that "Great Britain has a good fleet, but no expeditionary army that could count today on the- battlefields of Europe," it is postulated^ that the inevitable result is that every Government in Euro^ is being driven to consider what ius ■ plans would be in an event of war, and "no man can possibly say that there is-no risk of war." In the event of war it is said that every general staff will seek1 to destroy the enemy resistance by the most annihilating attack in the shortest possible space of time and so impose a peace on its own terms. "That is why," says the "Round Table," "in the discussions of the European general staffs the issue between Fascism.and Communism is being balanced by another set of considerations. No doubt Hitler . . . would prefer, in the event of a general war, to attack Russia. But some of the general staff, looking at the problem not from a political standpoint but purely as a problem in war, are known to urge other considerations." Rather than attack Russia first, run the risk of being attacked in the rear by France and other Powers, and face fhe possibility of a simultaneous war on two fronts, must not Germany revert to the Schlieffen plan and endeavour to gain a decision first in the West, and then deal with Russia and the East at leisure? it is asked. "For success in such an enterprise two conditions are necessary. The first is that Germany should have effective allies and the:second that it should be possible to deliver a paralysing blow at England, the principal organiser of the coalition against Germany last time. Can such a blow be delivered? AIR VULNERABILITY. "What causes anxiety today is that for some unknown period in the future Germany will have a decisive advantage over her neighbours—at least the western democracies of France and Great Britain. There is no doubt that the new German. air force has been founded on a Ford basis of production, while the British and French air forces are still on a Rolls-Royce basis—though both are reorganising on a Ford basis as rapidly as they can. For some unknown period—say a year or eighteen months from now—Germany might be able, in the event of a general war. to make continuous air atttack on London, for instance, the "most vulnerable because the most centralised and concenItrated capital in Europe—or on Paris,

or even on both together, an attack against which after the first few weeks of wastage, there could be neither adequate defence nor retaliation. "Today the communications of the Commonwealth are more vulnerable than they have been since the eighteenth century. .. . Whereas in 1914 the Navy had one fleet only to consider— the German—today it might have to deal with enemy Powers simultaneously in three places, the North Sea, the Suez Canal, and Singapore. .v. It is these considerations that explain the unanimity with which all parties in Great Britain are now supporting rearmament. And they are the final proof., of the total inadequacy of the League system of universal and auto* matic collective security in a world dominated by the military factor. In such a world, economic sanctions, especially by a partial League, are far too slow. "The British Commonwealth, therefore, is faced with very grave perplexities. It is liable in certain eventualities to a serious attack at its heart, and to have its communications severed, both in the Mediterranean and in the Far East. Its future clearly depends upon its armaments, thfi number of its friends either inside the.- League of Nations or outside who are also ready to fight, upon its own willingness and power to stand united in the event of attack, and upon its ability, through the domestic policy of its member nations, to keep the active co-operation of all sections of its own population in the eVent of war. "The answer to these perplexities, however, does not rest with Great Britain alone. It depends very largely on the view that the Dominions and India also take about them. It is essential that the realities should be faced at the Imperial Conference, which is to assemble in London next May."