WORLD'S NEWS.

Franklin Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 98, 23 August 1933, Page 3

WORLD'S NEWS.

FROM FAR AND NEAR. THE CAUSE OF PEACE. Addressing the Manchester University League Of Nations Society, Mr P. M. Oliver said the cause of peace did not seem t.o make the progress that it ought to make. Last year was full of disappointments and the prospects of lids year were not bright. It would seem that'something: was wrong with the cause and the advocacy of peace. It had been fashionable to blame first the experts, and then the statesmen for this, but he thought that if they wanted to get the cause of he slow progress of peace they would have to go deeper. He did not think that in Britain any enthusiasm for if could be found. There was plenty of muddleheaded goodwill, but little of the faith that would remove mountains. If there was lack of faith in Britain, there was in France and Poland lack of conLeague of Nations as set up to mainfidonce, while Germany regarded the tain the conditions antecedent to the Versailles Treaty. The tragedy of the present time was that having fought our way through to a peaceful world we found the peaceful world so xininspiring. The years since the Armistice had been years of irresolution, of little faith, little courage. We had been living in a twilight atmosphere, and had everywhere been called upon to restrict. He believed that the industrial depression was the strongest enemy of peace.

Strength of Modern Nations. "The strength of modern nations — one might almost say the strength of aff countries at all founded on the development of a thriving middle class, of middle class fortunes, and middle class attitudes," writes Signer Nitti, a former Prime Minister of Italy, in "Current History" "Since classic times the dictum of Aristotle has always been true. War always results in the destruction or ruin of the middle classes. Revolutions are produced with particular ease wherever there are only the rich ranged against the poor. In Russia, where a middle class was only beginning to emerge, the revolution occurred with ease and rapidity. Currency inflations, with their ensuing deflations, hasten this process of the decline of the middle class. I have studied very carefully the statistics Of income taxation in Germany and of direct taxes in England. Central Europe, and Italy, and I have noticed that without exception war, primarily injures the middle classes. The ability to resist revolutionary ideas is thus enfeebled just when revolutionary propaganda, is developing. ... A new war would unleash a series of revolutions, whatever the results might be from a military point of view. We should probably witness the collapse of the whole economic and social order."