ARMAMENTS AND PEACE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21853, 16 July 1934, Page 12

ARMAMENTS AND PEACE

Sir, —I regret that Macs Murray's article on SaturdayMemands an answer from me. I have Neither explicitly'nor implicitly objected to that part of Article 8 of the Covenant which refers to the enforcement by common action of international obligations. I endeavoured —and I refer readers to the text of iny letter and article—to insist on the interdependence of the various parts of the Covenant bearing on the question. Article 8, clause 1, must be read as a whole—"The members of the League recognise that, the maintenance of peace requires the reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations" (which can be read in Articles 10 to 16). I insist 1)n this because Archdeacon MacMurfjay takes different parts separately at different times, hops blithely from one to the other without realising his inconsistence, and then accuses me of bowdlerisrng the Covenant. My contention is that there can be no real reduction of armaments (a condition of the maintenance of peace), and hence no national safety worth the name, until Governments regard such armaments as they control as being for the enforcement by common action of international _ obligations—i.e., the defence of any victim of aggression. Armaments on _ the lowest scale consistent with national safety would then be infinitesimal compared with their present scale. But Governments—including the British—have failed in this, e.g;, in Manchuria. The British reduction in naval armaments below the war-time scale—which the French would claim is no greater than the reduction of their armies—still leaves them based, not on the idea of common action, either by or for Great Britain, but on the capacity to protect single-handed British interests throughout the world. Archdeacon Mac Murray is entitled to* his opinion that in view of the non-functioning of common action 'an increase in British armaments is the least of the evils offering: all I ask is that he should be clear —that this is leading away from the essential principle of the League as laid down in tho Covenant, i.e., national safety by common action, toward competition in armaments, which is but, at least, a very big o,yif? In the question of the Pact of Paris, which I am also accused of editing, we have a matter, not of opinion, but of fact. If Archdeacon MaeMurray would read the text of the Pact of Paris he would find that- the British reservation to which I referred was not inserted into the Pact at all, but was contained in a Note to the United States Government (May 19, 1928) explaining the sense in which the British Government accepted tho Pact;, Britain's signature was to the whole of the Pact as edited by the British Government, not by me—a much emasculated edition. Far from this "part being inserted to win the assent of the United States." the Pact of Paris came into being mainly through the initiative and inspiration of the United States—Professor Shotwell, I believe, had a good deal to do with it. The United States signed tho Pact without reservation, though her acceptance of the British explanation might imply, as thfr British Note shrewdly argued, a similar liberty on her part. I did not imply 1 particular iniquity on the part of Great Britain, but merely the loose interpretation of "defence" by all Powers w.itli great interests abroad. My reference to pacifism, which was not relevant tc the main issue and independent of my own views, arose from my indignation that a leader in a Christian Churcli should make public statements showing such ignorance of the principles o? a movement which derives its inspiration mainly from its adherents' endeavour to live fully what the Christian life means to them. All this letter I write, not as a partisan of the Leagufc of Nations, or the League of Nations Upion, but merely as a student of history who seeks intellectual integrity it the analysis of our own social and international"problems; and in dealing wits relevant documents. Willis T. G. Aikey, I , Lecturer in History. }Auckland^U niversity College.