The Growth of Freedom

Maoriland Worker, Volume 6, Issue 244, 20 October 1915, Page 5

The Growth of Freedom

AND THE SCRAP OF PAPER. "Persia, after expelling a despotic; Shuh, established a. Alejliss or Parliament in 1909, and was on the point of j acquiring internal freedom when Rub- i sia, prompted by Persia's military helplessness and her own greed a>nd detestation of .liberty, at the ond of ! 1911, violently m tacked her independence, in collusion with Ureal Britain,, ; which was equally pledged to maintain , ' Persia'-s independence and integrity. | "This assassination of freedom at its birth was but another instance of the Inst for conquest whirl), since about the dntc of the first Peace Conference : at the Hague (1890), lias possessed! diplomatic circles with* renoned l'erb-j j city. It chiefly urges them to assault: isolated und helpless cdirannratie's j where no .serifffts resistence need bo' j feared, and it seeks to destroy that j spirit of nationality which the nobler! statesmanship of last century sought: to establish or confirm. England has! thus absorbed the South African Republics (1902) after a struggle unexpectedly prolonged, and, contrary to • repeated promises of evacuation, she ; has retained her hold of Egypt for] thirty years. By her absorption of ' Fez (1911) Franco has overthrown the > independence of Morocco, which by the! Act of Algeciras she and the other! powers pledged themselves to maintain. For her violent annexation of Tripoli (1911) Italy hardly coudescend- j ed to produce a pretext, 'the whole! of Africa (with the exception of Abys-j einia, which possessed some capacity for resistance) has now been appor-j tioned among the Powers. In Em - ope, by Ihe annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1908) Austria tore up tho' Treaty of Berlin 0878) and by her continuous encroachments upon the liberties of Finland U906-1911) Russia violated tho oaths of oil the Tears since tho Diet of Borga (1S09). In Asia. Japan has annexed Korea (1911), thus violating tho Agreement, which guaranteed Korea's independence and integrity (1904). And at the end of tho e>amo year (1911) as we have seen, Russia destroyed tho independence oi Persia, which t,he and England hnd : pledged themselves to uphold by the pgreement of 1907. Seldom »n modern! history has tho game of grab been | played with bo shameless a voracity as \ in 1911, and it is evident that the j Foreign Offices of Europe and this j Country now regard tho most solemn i international treaties, pledges, and ob-1 ligations as no longer worth more than; three or four years' purchase. ' "A serious weakness of today's de-| mocracy is here exposed. The general; will has littlo or no control over For-1 eign Secretaries or diplomatists. Pro-| bably the majority of people in most; countries hare no predispoeitfion Uo i bad faith, to the violation of pledges, i the subjugation of the weak,'or the j slaughter of working men in other lands. But their will is not consulted or considered until the expression of itj is negligible. Crimes that would appear abhorrent in private life are secretly prepared by international diplomacy, the peoples remain ignorant until the fact is accomplished, or stands upon the verge. Tho gen-j eral mind is then easily deluded by such words and phrases as "inevitable," "self-defence," "prestige," "teaching a lesson," "the true humanity that required cruelty," "the

stirriv.il of tlic fittest/ or "the extension of Cliristknity, civilisation, unci markets." These* persuasive catchwords arc propagated uy financiers with loans to run, by capitalists with interests in armaments, company-pro-moters with an cyii on exploitation, manufacturers «.-itching tho clowd or open dour, urn! th« laud<>iuu(jg ''■• professional gentry with sons to launch in life." The l'orogoimc striking extract is takon from "The Growth of Freedom," pages S-'j-ST, which win; .published at the beginning of 1012 (two-and-a-half years before the war) by Henry W • Nevinson. Nothing ever written could more aoiirately indicate the real condition of diplomacy, its regard for ".Scraps of Paper" and its care for tho "weak and helpless nations" of which no hear so much to-day! No greater argument could bo adduced than this of Xivrnson's for the position taken up by the Union of Democratic Control, which seeks to place in the hands of the People tho secrets of the Foreign Office, and to restrict the manufacture of agreements, treaties, ad arrangements within reasonable limits.