PEACE SPEECHES.

Evening Star, Issue 20022, 13 November 1928, Page 6

PEACE SPEECHES.

"NiiVEit again" has been jiuklo tlio motto of the Armistice Day celebrations by the two nations that promise to have the greatest influence on the world's future. Mr Baldwin finds the principal achievements of his Government to have lain in its efforts lor the conserving of international peace, and it is an encouraging picture which he draws of the. progress that has been made in Europe in that direction. "Enmities in Europe have disappeared or are disappearing, war wounds have healed or are healing, and currencies have been stabilised; and though there are grave economic problems still to bo solved their solution is being approached in a new spirit of goodwill. There is more and more throughout Europe and throughout the world today a, feeling of the necessity of the nations getting closer and closer together." Mr Coolidge has made a speech on the foreign policy of his Government which suggests that such differences as exist between Great Britain and America in working for a common object should not be irreconcilable. It is hard to follow him when he says that the United States' benefits from the war were not material, buv spiritual. Tf America reaped spiritual benefits from the war she derived a benefit from it which no other country, except possibly Belgium, can be said to have received. But there is no fear that Americans will desire another war for the sake of more spiritual benefits, and a truth which cannot be too much emphasised and considered was stated by the President when he said that he did not know any nation which had ever been able to provide arms enough always to be at peace. It is nob by the piling up of so-called defensive armaments that peace can be assured. Having said so much, Mr Coolidge might have been ready to waive his ideas of a constant need for protecting America's oversea possessions. There is no country in the world that is likely to attack those in any future that can be foreseen. That Great Britain, with far greater oversea interests and possessions that arc an anxiety as much as an advantage, should seek to increase them at America's expense is unthinkable, and a war between Japan and the United States could only bo injurious to both nations without the slightest chance of being decisive if it were limited to the original combatants. Discussions between the United States and Great Britain for the limitation of naval armaments have not been successful so far, but there is no reason why the end sought should not be achieved when both countries are prepared to take the merest fraction of the risks for peace which they" 1 have taken in the past for war. The most encouraging report of the state of tho world on Armistice Day is that which I comes from Germany, which does not i observe it. Everywhere to-day, we are I told, there is growing prosperity and a complete absorption in all the benefits of peace. ' Deutschland Über Alios' has no attractions. " Germany would rather be second at the Olympic Gaines than first in another armaments race." May that spirit continue long in the Fatherland!