THE ONLY WAY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 43, 20 January 1936, Page 8

THE ONLY WAY

TO SECURE PEACE. BY COLLECTIVE ACTION. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (British Official Wireless.) Received January 18, 12.40 p.m. RUGBY, Jan. 17. Mr R. A. Eden, speaking on foreign affairs, said that if the collective system is to be effective it must possess strength and elasticity—strengtn in order that aggression may be effectively discouraged and elasticity in order that some of the causes of war may he removed through the promotion by consent of the necessary changes when the time is ripe for them to take place. “These are two complementary aspects of security, and the more certainly the system can comprehend them tlie , more firmly will it establish its own authority and the more surely will it draw others within its orbit. Yet that stungtli must be dependent upon tlie extent to which all tlie members of the League, in accordance with tlieir relative capacities, are prepared to play their part. There can be no collective system in which the full burden is to be borne by one or two.” Moreover, the effective establishment of a collective peace system was now the only way to an arms agreement hv which the burden of world armaments might be reduced, ft would .be a profound mistake to imagine that tlie British Government or people were proor anti-country. Their policy was directed against no individual or nation as such, but as a League member they were bound to be opposed to any violation of tlie Covenant. They would always be found arrayed on the side of the collective system ■ against any government’or people which sought, by a return to “Power politics,” to break iqi the collective peace system, ignoring the Covenant which provides the machinery for a peaceful settlement. The British people desired nothing so ardently as peace, and founded their policy oii membership of the League of Nations as the best hope of achieving it, Mr Eden declared.