PERMANENT PEACE

Northern Advocate, 17 August 1932, Page 8

PERMANENT PEACE

"POSSIBLE WITHIN 30 YEARS.’' SIR ROBERT GARRAN’S VIEWS. SYDNEY, August 9. "I believe that, if civilisation can bo long survive the dangers that beset it, within 30 years war will be renounced in practice as it has already been renounced in promise,” said Sir Robert Garran, K.C., formerly Commonwealth Solicitor-General, in con-, eluding an address to students in the University Union Hall. “It seems,” said Sir Robert Garran, “that we have already got a long way along the road to the. judicial or arbitral settlement of international disputes. Nearly all the nations in the world have pledged themselves to adopt peaceful means for settling their disputes. All the machinery is there ready for use. The Permanent Court of International Justice is there, not only ready, but regularly functioning. “It would be rash to say that these solemn agreements have ended war..lt is possible at any moment that a nation may, either of calculated purpose or at the urge of popular passion, ■ tear up these scraps of paper and resort to war. But the existence of these solemn pledges makes it much more difficult and more dangerous for any nation to take that course. “War will only become impossible when the will to war no longer prevails—when the rule of reason is so firmly implanted in men’s minds that, for fear of public opinion, at home and abroad, no war lord, executive, parliament, or people will dare to commence hostilities. The issue rests with thd moral sense of mankind. The advance in that moral sense, within the memory of this generation, has been great. Aided by such movements as the University League of Nations group and other bodies with kindi'ed aims, aided by those who are in charge of the generation now growing up, the advance must surely gain momentum.” In the earlier portion of his address, Sir Robert Garran traced the history of movements to settle disputes, individual and national, by peaceful means. Fighting, he said, was the primitive method. Australians were

so used to the reign of law and order that, except in what was called the underworld, one decent citizen with a grievance against another never dreamed of shooting him with a pistol or spitting him with a sword. They were apt to forget how very recent a development this was. There were still some people who held that, in spite of leagues, treaties, and covenants, the ultimate arbiter as between nations had always to be force, but the rapid march of events during recent years gave some hope that in spite of many difficulties still, to be overcome, the peaceful settlement of international disputes would, at no distant date, become the rule, and-that the nation that launched an anned attack upon another would be as imujh an outlaw as the man who settled a score by shooting his neighbour. Formerly, said Sir Robert Garran, the world of nations was a. world of bullies, and diplomacy aimed at a precarious peace by combination to prevent any one of them, or any gang of them, becoming cock of the walk. In the nineteenth century something like an international conscience began to develop. Under the system of arbitration many treaties were made, although most of them left loopholes. In 1899 a Permanent Court of Inter-] national Arbitration was established, but up to the Great War only 11 cases had been submitted to it. After the war the Court of International Justice was established. This Court had two functions —to give judgment in disputes submitted to it by the parties, and to give advice, when the Council or the Assembly •of the League of Nations asked for it. Such advice had the import moral effect of a declaration by an expert and impartial tribunal of the right and wrong of the 1 matter. . ' ; " ; The Statute .of the Court, in what was' known as , the “optional clause,” gave members of the League the option, of coming to • an agreement to submit disputes to'the Coux't. Most members of the. League, including, all the British Dominions, ha'd accepted the optional clause,' with certain ■ reservations. Australia, rightly so, had decided that the White Australia policy was a domestic matter, and not a question for the Court’s determination. ... The Kellogg! Pact. (1928) and the General Act, for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes (1930) also had been ; great steps towards peaceful* settlement.