ABOLITION OF WAR

Northern Advocate, 12 February 1931, Page 7

ABOLITION OF WAR

A HR EAT OPBORTUN UFA'

HENDERSON DISSERT A TION

(British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, February lu.

'Hu- Secretary of sSlatc for Foreign Affairs. Mr Arthur Hemler.sun, sprakV.ii<4 at a disarmament demonstration in London, said that disarmament by in-

ternational argeoment was a do‘in ho recognition by all the nations that their armies, their navies and their air forces were matters which concerned not themselves- alone, but other people also. -'lt was the acceptance of an imperative obligation that military preparations should no longer bo determined by a nation's unrestricted will only, but should be part of the general concern of the international conumvii-

Mr Henderson emphasised that everything depended upon the maimer in which the Government completed the framework which the Preparatory Commission on Disarmament of (he League of Nations had drawn up. The figures which the Government inserted mi it depended upon public opinion. It people wanted disarmament they could have it. and the friends of peace had 12 months in which to mobilise opinion in favour of a great opportunity, which might not recur. If they really drifted, then the next war would be incomparably worse than the last A military expert, had said that in the last war we were killing by retail, but the next time it would be done wholesale.

‘ ‘ Wc have surely .learned that it is br-ymid our pow-e.r to humanise the conduct of modern war," said Mr Henderson. “(luce a war begins no .man and no government can control it. The .only way to stop such barbarity is to stop war itself. Wc may be very certain th,-at if war occurs it will bring •with it the destruction of life on a ■scale .such as we have never imagined, a destruction which will engulf, in all 'human probability, the very civilisa-' ’tion Ju which we live.”

Turning to strictly economic reasons for the policy for which the Govern•n,;i’iit stood, Mr Henderson pointed out that the economic ■ crisis, the grim spectre of unemployment, and the ■world crisis generally were all parts of the aftermath of the last war. Queues of idle men, the depressed state of industry, all represented victims of the war. The world economic crisis could only be coped with by world action, but world action meant international co-operation on economic questions of every kind, and this would never be attained while policies were founded on the constant fear of war.

Tariff values, self-sufficiency, trade prohibition, -economic nationalism, these were all consequences of tho conception of national interest which had boon created by the fear of wav. Europe- today w T -as as full of difficult problems as it w.a» five years ago.