“INHERITED MUDDLE”

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 April 1933, Page 5

“INHERITED MUDDLE”

MR. LLOYD GEORGE’S CRITICISM [BY CABLE —PBESS ASSN. —COPYBIGHT.] LONDON, March 31. “Now, you young fellows, try your hands. It is useless to blame the older generation for the inherited muddle. Youth must buckle on armour and cleave a way through the chaos,” exclaimed Mr. Lloyd George, when opening the Universities Congress at Cambridge. “Other means than pacifist resolutions must be devised to prevent war,” he added, “namely a reduction of armaments, and strengthening of the machinery of peace. “The only man desiring war in 1914 was not. in Germany, France, Russia or England. I shall tell the story a few weeks hence. Every country at present condemns every other’s actions, which* leads to nothing but nationalism, a fruitful cause of war while any nation remains oppressed. “Wilson, Clemenceau and I did not create any new nation at Versailles. We simply recognised the facts expressed by world sentiment in favour of the emancipation of oppressed .nationalities. If nations abuse that liberty, they are doing what mankind always has done and will do. We are not responsible for buried, nations rising from their mausoleums, doffiing their grave-clothes, and donning armour. Realising the danger of insufficient armament against aggressive neighbours, most nations are unbalanced, due to the scourge of war. “The present chaos would have supervened even without a Great War. There is something wrong with the economic system because abundance produced scarcity, while" science saved labour. “Those refusing to disarm are largely responsible for the situation in Germany, and are driving the Germans to frenzy because they believe themselves tricked. It looks like it. The Allies did not fulfil their promise to disarm after Germany had disarmed, merely signing anything and giving armament lip service.”

ECONOMIC CONFERENCE NEW YORK, March 31. “The Times’s” Washington correspondent has reported that a Roosevelt spokesman said: “Let it be known today that, unless Mr. Ramsay MacDonald requests it, the American Government will proceed on the theory that the Economic Conference will be held at London, despite the hints that the French and others would prefer to have it. at Washington.” It was pointed out that th© invitation to the conference came from England, and thus it wmuld be an international discourtesy to discuss or even contemplate a change. INVITATION TO MR. MACDONALD? WASHINGTON, April 1. Reports that. Mr. Norman Davis (U.S.A, envoy) w'ho is in London, has carried an invitation to Mr. MacDonald to come to Washington in order to discuss the war debts and the Economic Conference agenda have aroused interest here, but no official comment is forthcoming.