UNITY OF NATIONS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 146, 23 June 1938, Page 9

UNITY OF NATIONS

ELEMENT FOR PEACE OBJECT OF BRITISH POLICY RESPECT FOR LAW (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, June 21. Addressing a meeting at the Royal Institute of International Af- * fairs in London today, Lord Halifax, J Foreign Secretary, observed that a ' growing appreciation of the cattfclys- J mic effect of war and the fact that ( it unsettled at least as much as it l settled, and that its influence on '■ human affairs was rather disruptive J than decisive, had given rise to in- j creased public interest in foreign ■ policy. There was a desire among British people, he thought, to make the most ( effective contribution it could to j settlement of the present world ] anxieties, and he cited with warm ap- ' proval the words of Mr. Cordell Hull, 1 the United States Secretary of State, ] that "national isolation is not a means . to security, but rather a fruitful < source of insecurity." ' NECESSITY OF ORDERED LIFE. Drawing a balance-sheet of British qualifications and disqualifications for making an effective contribution in foreign affairs, Lord Halifax put on ; the debit side the long experience of national unity, together with a lack of. : imagination and some failure to understand the thoughts and actions of other nations arising from that national unity. On the credit side .he put certain positive qualities. First among these was the British respect for law, founded upon the conviction that no social life was tolerable or possible on other terms. This, the British held to be as true of nations as of individuals. The first necessity of an ordered life was that settlement of differences by force should.be abolished and replaced by settlement through some process according to law. Secondly, there was the British recognition that the law must rest upon consent, and thirdly, the fact that, by its development of democracy, the British people had trained themselves in practice and atmosphere to toleration. PROGRESSIVE CHANGE. The British people would have no use for a world society in which the law would be expected to' be an obedient handmaid of lawless force. What they had to seek was a way of orderly and progressive change. Lord Halifax agreed that the problem was easier to state than to solve, . and sai'd it would never be solved ex- ; cept by mutual confidence in good ini tentions. The world, therefore, would i find British policy repeatedly emphasising those things which united ■ the nations instead of those things] ■ which divided them, and, for the same j i reason, would note that the British ■ , were not interested to secure so- , called diplomatic success if by doing > so they prejudiced the attainment of > their main objective—appeasement and peace. 1 Referring to the League, Lord Halti fax said that events made a full application of the Covenant impracticable today, but there was no reason 1 why a country like Britain, which be- . lieved the spirit of the Covenant to . be the right spirit in International f affairs, should not continue to practise that spirit in its dealings with other nations. That it was trying to do.