THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, JULY 19, 1930. TOWARD PEACE OR WAR?

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20620, 19 July 1930, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, JULY 19, 1930. TOWARD PEACE OR WAR?

From liine to time statesmen give their readings of the international barometer. This is part of their business; not an easy parb} for the data require expert handling and may admit of diverse interpretations according to the hopes and fears of the observers. The Duke of Sutherland and Viscount Cecil have been telling the Inter-Parlia-mentary Unions' Conference what they read. In the House of Commons, Mr. Henderson, as Foreign Minister, has done the same; but the forecast to which he is inclined is different from what they proclaim. None of the three, bo it noted, is dogmatic. They evidently know that this sort of thing, like the other that ordinary folk have been doing for untold generations and the near-experts for the last few years, is beset with liability to error. In neither sphere is meteorology vet an exact science. Hence the risk of interpreting indications of peace or war according to the possibility of fitting them into a particular programme personally favoured. Take Mr. Henderson. He belongs to a Cabinet dominated by a policy of peace gestures and cosmopolitan gardenparties. Therefore he delights to tell the House of the splendid response to America's invitation to sixty-seven peoples to sign the Briand-Kellogg Pact renouncing war —though admission of Russia's hostility to Britain and general tintrustworlhiness has had to be drawn out of him with a dialectic suctionpump. Sixty-one have signed, he says: it will be a line day tomorrow. The Duke who i 3 presiding over the parliamentarians is far from being so certain about the world's weather, and urges international cooperation lest another great war should kick us all into an inescapable abyss. " Change," with a movement toward "Stormy,"' is his forecast, instead of Mr. Henderson's anticipation of " Set, fair." Viscount Cecil, who has seen many a bright morning, at Geneva and elsewhere, turn cloudy and cold, recalls the Naval Conference with a shudder, yet hopes, as ever, for an eventual though not early coining of real peace. Who reads aright? All three, to an extent; but it is worth noting that each, whatever his hope, sees clouds in the sky. Sir. Henderson names the six States so far withholding signature to the pact renouncing war —Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, San Salvador and Uruguay. They are all in that part of the world over which the United States claims quasi-sov-ereignty, telling Europe to keep her hands off it and mind her own business. Five of them compose the bulk of the South American continent, and all belong more or less closely to that Latin America which, except for Brazil—Portuguese by origin—might as well be called Spanish. Such of tlicin as are in the League of Nations form a bloc there, and in the round of their ordinary life thev are tending to draw closer to each other. But why? Not because of the PanAmerican Union which has its headquarters in Washington, in token of its establishment by United States politicians; but because that country's patronising of them has gone embarrassingly, almost exasperatingly, far. The pride of their ancestors inspires resentment at this. Colombia has spoken her mind about interference with her domestic, politics; others of them have complained of the avid eagerness of United States capital to control their industrial and commercial development. The periodical congresses of the Pan-Ameri-can Union are frequently marked by a sharp cleavage between the United States and the other members, and it is known that they hold lo Geneva as a counterpoise to Washington. All is not epiiel in the Western hemisphere, and this hesitation lo sign the peace pact has some significance of that.

Longing for a pacification of Kurope, Viscount Cecil turns for a model to North America rather than South. There, saving wh.it lies nearest to the. south, there is a peace not likely to be broken, but tin l national elements, politically viewed, are without variety, and the case is as simple as that of heterogeneous Kurope is complex. The meteorological conditions arc totally unlike, i'.til the Naval Conference has given Viscount Cecil misgivings : it was conducted, lie says, too much in an atmosphere of war. It. was, as all the world now knows ; and it has left a disturbing influence behind. Mr. Henderson, for all his readiness to deduce a happy forecast from the wide signing of the peace pact, knows better than many how ineffective was that pact to constrain the fivo Powers to reduce their armaments. They phiced little or no reliance on its resounding promises. It, would be wrong to say that they cherish intentions of launching attack themselves or that, they fear immediate attack by their neighbours. But they have no confidence that war

will not break out somewhere' and kick them into tho abyss with others. How then ought the international barometer to be read'! Not without hope that the future will bo fair, but with wise acknowledgment that clouds are in the offing and are apt to gather quickly. This is no time to uri sheath the sword and (linp; away the scabbard, nor to discard both sword and scabbard as no longer needed. The sheathed weapon most fitly symbolises the requirement oE the changeful time.