COLLECTIVE SECURITY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 121, 21 April 1938, Page 3

COLLECTIVE SECURITY.

IS THERE AN ALTERNATIVE? "(By Hebe Spaull.) That duAng the past two hundred years Great Britain has only been able to defend her liberties and to establish herself as a world Power by dependence on collective security was a striking point made by the Duchess of Atholl when she spoke at the great mass meeting held recently at the Queen’s Hall, London, under the auspices of the League of Nations Union. In the eighteenth, in the nineteenth and in the twentieth centuries Great Britain was obliged to take up arms against despots. In the eighteenth century it was the French sovereign Louis XIV, in the nineteenth century it was the Emperor Napoleon, and in the twentieth century the Kaiser Wilhelm. In not one of these wars was England able to defend herself unaided. With each century the area of the conflict had widened, corresponding -to the growing inter-dependence of the modern world, until in the last Great War nearly all the world was drawn in. This collective security had had to be hastily improvised on the outbreak of hostilities and in consequence it frequently gave signs of breaking down under the strain. The League of Nations provided the first attempt at preorgiinised collective action against aggression, aimed not against any particular State, but against any State that threatened to disturb the peace. ' Sir Archibald Sinclair, another speaker at the same meeting, evoked loud cheers when he declared that “If we proclaim that we will not help other countries in their hour of need, neither will other countries help us in ours.”