THE PERVERSION OF THE PEACE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3445, 19 March 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE PERVERSION OF THE PEACE.

"A Mad World."

ARMAMENTS, DEBTS, AND CROSSrPURPOSES.

A CARNIVAL OF DELUSIONS AND THE RETURN TO SANITY.

(By J. L. Garvin, in the London Observer.)

If the international situation were less serious there would be less hope. Were the facts more comfortable there would have been more danger of continued drift with regard to debts, disarmament, and other questions concerning sane co-operation for peace and welfare. Sheer practical necessity seems to be the surest way of forcing an improvement of international conditions. Thas necessity and nothing less stares the nations in the face. To an anxious glance at things as they seem on the surface the difficulties in the way of a new world settlement —such as would create more confidence and happiness for many years—might well appear insuperable. But the underlying disposition of peoples and governments is better than the discordant declarations of short-sighted politicians whether in Europe or America. The needs are plain and even desperate. The facts this time are so grave that it is no longer possible to deny or disguise them. The dread of making them worse is everywhere a feeling silently growing in influence. In the cause of reason and common sense second thoughts are becoming stronger than first thoughts. Each great nation knows in its heart that for its own sake some supreme effort for the general good must be made in the next few months: u THE VISITOR FROM MARS." To the imaginary visitor from Mars the present state of international affairs on this planet might well appear the reign of lunacy. Suppose it to be a second visit, and that the former was before the end of the war. If a Martian philosopher thought the nations furiously demented in the midst of their mutual carnage and devastation, he might well/think them almost more inexplicably mad amidst the perversities of their peace. Take the political state of three continents. Including Germany, one of the foremost factors of modern civilisation, some members of the League are forcibly disarmed in the name of peace, while other members remain armed to the teeth in flat defiance of the covenant. History has never known a contrast more glaring and more essentially barbarous in its logic than is this fact of the twentieth century. In spite of the Kellogg Pact and the covenant together, there is more killing machinery than ever before existed. It is maintained at an enormous expense at a time when the general extent of unemployment is unparalleled. The destructive weapons and methods are more terrific in their ruthless ingenuity than any former generation knew; and for the first time they are largely a deliberate menace to the promiscuous mass of civilians, women atnd children as well as men. Instead of moral reconciliation, which is the soul of peace, these conditions keep up a universal sense of disturbance, uncertainty, distrust, and apprehension.

A DISLOCATED CIVILISATION. Vast Russia, covering about a seventh part of the whole earth's surface, but largely shut off from the rest of it, is dominated by an abnormal psychology, and by the fanaticism of a peculiar economic cult. Again, history has seen no stranger spectacle than in this direction. But look further. After twenty years the Chinese Republic is anything but republican, and as far as ever from the settiled order which never can be attained except by thorough devotion to the idea of Federalism, and by the constructive capacity to create it. China's ideals are freedom, peace, and unity; her realities are militarist rivfactious dissensions, and endless miseries in a seething and indescribable jumble. This is a madness not likely to be cured for many years without a thorough resort to foreign co-operation instead of the premature campaign against foreign interests. Japan has been compelled to take up arms against the former War Lord in Manchuria, and against his hostile forces and administration, in order to defend and reassert the treaty rights which have created peace and progress to a degree unknown anywhere in China proper.

In India Britain's full and generous desire to give the indispensable aid required to build up the structure of Federal self-government is harassed and obstructed by extreme Indian Nationalism. Without any doubt whatever, the impracticable visions of Mr Gandhi and the Congress would steep the sub-continent into an anarchy more hopeless than China has inherited from her own exalted idealist, Sun Yat-Sen. ECONOMIC INSANITIES.

So much for some political aspects of the world's confusion at the beginning oil 1932. The evidences of economic insanity amongst nations would appear still more astonishing and convincing to the supposed impartial visitor from Mars. Debts and reparations, armed anxieties and disarmed humiliation, the spirit of economic nationalism rampant in every continent, but, even worse in awakened Asia than elsewhere—all these factors working together have resulted in an exhibition of stupendous absurdities.

America has half the worlds' gold in her vaults and millions of unemployed in' her streets. Her method reduces the purchasing power of all the international customers she expected to supply when she increased her industrial construction and equipment with immense vigour and optimism to a degree far ahead of normal demand. Is anyone happier in

the United. States because pf this gigantic accumulation of one pleasing yellow substance extracted from the curious composition of the earth ? Not a bit. It only encouraged a false dream.

Our nearest neighbours in France were still more misled by a more systematic pursuit of delusion. In proportion to her population. France possesses more gold per head than America or any other country. She holds a quarter of the world's whole sto'ck. Is it an infallible secret of good fortune ? On the contrary. The depression, though it made itself felt across the Channel later than amongst ourselves, is now eating deeply into the industrial life of France, and notably her profits, as the favourite resort of the world's pleasure-seekers in peace time, were neveij, less in living recollection than now.

More and more nations try to compete in the production or manufacture of the same things, and try at one and the same time to expand external trade while restricting exchange to the utmost. That this was a Bedlamite policy never occurred to its practitioners so long as the British market remained open and helplessly exposed to the effects of every foreign system. This country sold less and bought more until its favourable trade balance, so long renowned and envied, was lost; tihe island, formerly the chief workshop of the world, became no longer able to pay for its annual purchases by its year's earnings. In our complacent course as a nation up to the crash of last autumn we were quite as crazy as mad hatters or March hares. THE GOLD AND THE SILVER. Britain of all countries Britain the traditional centre of international credit and chief clearing-house of in-

ternational accounts finds itself forced off gold as the result of various factors, including American and French hoarding of that) metal, universal protection abroad, and our prodigal purchases from foreign countries, which gave no equivalent support to our own industry and employment. Many other nations are off gold in the same way, partly because of their particular circumstances, partly because of their trading relations with Great Britain.

Our own relative position undoubtedly is better than it was. The political example we have given has been a tremendous reinforcement of all the steadying and moderating influences in the world. But, in* spite of ourselves, we have been compelled, in the economic sphere, to aggravate the world's uncertainty and disquiet. In Asia nearly half mankind is more depressed by the fall o£ silver, the only medium it knows, than is the other half by tihe derangement of the gold system. The dislocation between East and West is a fact of immense importance. Common sense demands two other World's Conferences sitting simultaneously and in contactl—one on the future of : silver, the other on the future of gold, each giving consideration from different standpoints to the relations of the two metals. It is mad, though dull, for any country interested in wide world trade to shirk either of these proposed conferences, yet some civilised governments demur to both. TRADE OR "TRIBUTE." Next comes the most fantastic and disastrous of all the world's self-de-feating delusions. We mean reparations and debts. Until this form of the frenzy is thoroughly cured moral conditions required for the real progress of disarmament cannot begin to exist). On that head, and the sooner the better, let us face the facts and cease playing impotently with pretences.

To remove at once and .for ever the incubus which stifles the natural ! breathing of the world as an economic organism would do more good than any other measure conceivable. It would lighten and brighten the whole spirit of mankind. The total wiping out of debts and reparations would pay the American people over and over again. It is not too much to say that the present system means the continuous sacrifice of trade to tribute—an ugly word, but the only one which describes the moral and practical effect of the process. Cancellation, tacit or formal, is the condition of that Franco-German friendship and co-operation which not only for disarmament and peace, but for confidence and prosperity, would do more ijhan any other influence what ever. I

Both the history and the present plight of this question are lamentable and ridiculous. As soon as the war was over, even _ experte and bankers amongst the Allies were found to pronounce that Germany could pay £20,000,000,000. The first official demand was for over £11,000,000,000 imposed on terms of payment which would have kept Germany in arrear and bondage for ever. _ In another couple of years the Till was reduced ! to something over £6,000,000,000. Even this was still in the region of lunacy. After the chaos of currency and the invasion of the Ruhr, the demand on Germany was reduced in effect to about £2,200,000,000. Under the Young Plan the present total contemplated is rather less than £2,000,000,000. This ludicrous of original blunders and subsequent continual scaling down points to disappearance altogether, and to nothing else. It is proposed on paper that German liabilities shall last almost to the end of the eentury. Britain and France would be paying America for nearly as long . The pon-

derous burthens certain to cause crises again and again—were to rest more and more on the shoulders of a generation unborn when the war was Jought, and upon their children's children. To suppose these things possible was the ecstasy of hallucination. The whole conception has fallen down. Not all the king's horses and all the king's men can put HumptyDumpty up again. Never. Germany cannot pay for an interval so long that no reasonable prospect of resumption afterwards can be honestly held out. We think Chancellor Bruning is bound to speak plamly in this sense at Lausanne. Nor can the Brit r ish and French peoples, go on paying America after Germany has ceased to pay them. That, in the first instance, would be a practical impossibility. Afterwards it would be a moral impossibility. Long before the dreary decades of liability were out, two generations hence, the- situation would become too much for human nature.

"REASON IS MARCHING." With deep conviction it can be suggested that for France to take the lead in proposing the final wiping out of debts and repa**at!ons would, be a master-stroke of bold and wise policy. First taken up across the Channel by that brilliant and searching writer, Monsieur Jacques Bainvflle, this view is now supported by that powerful foresighted organ of the French Left, the Depeche de Toulouse. Other voices will be heard in the same sense before long. Reason is en route. Reason is marching. An irresistible tendency which will end in total cancellation and nothing else has entered into the facts themselves. We neither say nor expect that this truth will be recognised in the coming conclusions of the Lausanne Conference. As a nominal compromise nothing less than a three years' moratorium can be granted to the Reich. The term ought to be five years, not only for Germany's sake, but for the world's. For this extent of agreed relief the German Government will fight its very hardest after expressing boldly and necessarily the conviction of the entire German people that the whole system must come to an end.

The international duty of Mr MacDonald and his colleagues is plain. A solemn obligation rests on them to set a siignal example of clarifying ability, moral courage, and goodwill towards every nation ensnared in these miserable entanglements. While recognising, that finality cannot be reached, and that formulas of compromise may have to be accepted—but they should do their utmost in that case for a five years' moratorium —let the British Government not shrink from the fullest declaration of its own belief that in all the interests of world settlement the postwar curse of international reparations ought to be terminated. The change of moral atmosphere would enable the question of disarmament in its turn to be approached in a new spirit. In that connection again facts and their consequences will have to be faced at last. The statesmanship of this country, working in the closest sympathy with the United States, will have to rise to the height of the argument. The future of the League of Nations, itself will be at stake sooner or later on this issue. Germany cannot remain in the League except upon a basis of full and recognised equality with the other chief members. Nor is any other principle compatible with the sane spirit of peace. Either Germany's neighbours must disarm in their turn according to the injunction of the covenant, or she herself will insist upon her right to re-arm.

In this matter, to suppose that one of the greatest of all nations can be treated for eyer as 3 second-class people is madness again. We are all apt to forget that the years are moving and how far they have moved. Anomalies which seemed necessary in the abnormal period after the war become intolerable when the ideas and feelings of nations resume a more normal course. We have absolute faith that the American people on all these subjects will take the great view in due time. For the worlds return to sanity in other respects one preliminary is required. To. clear the way fbr cutting down armaments, wipe out the debts.