PREVENTING WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 125, 30 May 1938, Page 9

PREVENTING WAR

MORAL WEIGHT OF U.S.A.

REMINDER TO NATIONS

PEACE PACT PLEDGE

(United Press Association—By Electric Telecraph—Copyright.) WASHINGTON, May 28. Alarmed at the international situation, the Secretary of State, Mr. Cordell Hull, has issued a statement reminding the Governments of Europe of their obligations to keep the peace under the Kcllogg-Briand anti-war pact.

"With reference to the critical situation regarding the countries of Central Europe, I desire to say that the Government of' the United States has been following recent developments with close and anxious attention," he says. "Nearly ten years ago the United States signed the Paris Treaty, providing for renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy. There are -now 63 countries party to that treaty, in which they agreed that the settlement and solution of all disputes would never be sought except by pacific means. That pledge is not less binding now than when it was entered into. It is binding upon all parties. "We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that any outbreak of hostilities anywhere in the world injects into world affairs a factor of general disturbance the ultimate consequence of which no man can foresee, and is liable to inflict upon all nations incalculable permanent injuries. "The people of this country have, in common with all nations, a desire for stable, permanent conditions of peace, justice, and progress; and- a most earnest desire for peace being maintained no matter where or under what circumstances there are controversies between nations."

The statement is regarded as putting America's moral weight behind the efforts of European democracies to prevent war in view of the critical weekend in Czechoslovakia.