NORTHERN ADVOCATE DAILY SATURDAY, JULY 15, 1933. “SPLENDID ISOLATION”

Northern Advocate, 15 July 1933, Page 8

NORTHERN ADVOCATE DAILY

SATURDAY, JULY 15, 1933. “SPLENDID ISOLATION”

Registered for transmission through ,the post as a Newspaper.

AVlieh tbe last raail, 1 eft England, an interesting controversy was being waged between Lord Beaverbrook' and Mr J. A. Spender,._t)]e.,, well-known, journalist. Mr Spender stated in the London “News Chronicle” that those who were urging Britain to scrap the League of Nations and return to “Splendid isolation” were giving the nation very bad advieoi if they were thinking of what is called' security! ' Lord Beaverbrook. of course, is‘shell an individual, because, '"in his paper, “The Sunday Express,” he has repeatedly- urg-ecl • that, policy. He immediately rose to the bait, and;- in justifying his attitude, contended that ' because Britain i lin'd escaped great wars, as she had done during her isolation period in the last century, she should escape them now if she returned to isolation. >-Mr Spender, an ardent supporter of the League of Nations; said 'that Britain had no alternative but to take part, in the Great AVar in order to save the 'country and Empire, because she was living in ;a fighting- world in which all were- living-before the war! His view is that “if we scrap the League of Nations and go back into that world, as we assuredly would, we shall sooner or later be under the same compulsion. ” Developing his argument, Mr Spender says that what drove Mr Balfour’s Government from “splendid isolation” at the be-, ginning of-the century was realisation of the fact that in the isolated position in which they then were they could not. at one and the same time (1) concentrate the fleet in Home waters to meet the rise of the German fleet, (2) ■■maintain the necessary supremacy in the Mediterranean, and (3) guard the position in the Far East against the Coalition which then threatened, unless they had some friend or ally on whom they could depend. This was an altogether new situation, 7 and the conclusion the Government came to was that no effort ' in arma“ments which the British people could make .single-handed;, could ensure the safety of the Empire, ■if it remained isolated'in an unfriendly world. Combating Lord

irseaverbrook's habitual attitude, .which suggests that the Empire .is a strategical unit which could be easily defended against all 1 'comers. Mr Spender declares that, ■strategically speaking, the defence of the British Empire, with its widely scattered members, presents extraordinarily difficult :problems, and “if it were surrounded by a tariff wall,- as he proposes, and claimed to rail off a quarter of the globe from foreign trade, it would certainly become, as never before, a target for 'the hostility of its . heighI hours. ” In Mr Spender’s opinion the advice to scrap the League of Nations and return to isolation is advice -to take the i road to .war. .“.The idea., that we ! could save ourselves by saying that we weren’t interested „ and [didn’t want to .fight is nonsense. If it.takes two to make "a quarrel, it takes more than one to keep -the peace.”; '