PEACE OR WAR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22670, 6 March 1937, Page 16

PEACE OR WAR

MENACE FROM THE AIR DETERRENT TO AMBITION r The impossibility of defending any country against aerial attack makes peace tho only alternative to mutual self-destruction, according to Mr. F. Hall-Jones, of Invercnrgill, who addressed the Pacific Rotary Conference in Wellington. "Will there be another war?" ho asked. "Not a minor war, but a war among those great European Powers that control coal and iron and vast factories and shipbuilding yards, and all that is called the 'war potential' ! necessary for a major conflict? There | are two schools of thought. "Ono is that continued expansion of armaments must reach bursting point. There arc irreconcilable antipathies between Bolshevism and Fascism that lat tho moment have their miniature battleground in Spain. Thcro is the irreconcilable hostility between France —tortured, scarified, and scared by two great wars —and Germany, humiliated j and embittered, not by defeat, but by | the terms of tho Peace Treaty. There is tho irresistiblo forco of treaty revision meeting the immovable object, the status quo, and the result must ho war. "The other school of thought, to which I adhere," Mr. Hall-Jones added, "believes that, so long as these great Powers are armed, or disarmed to a reasonably equal degree—and that necessitates * tlio present rearmament programme of Britain —the impossibility of defending any country against aerial attack makes peace tho only alternative to mutual self-destruction. "A close network of airways has spread over Europe. Tho European peoples are becoming conscious that' frontiers so easily crossed in times of pence are equally vulnerable in war; they are increasingly aware that war is not a , matter of armies, but of people, and will spoil indiscriminate slaughter to the civilian population. "To the ambitious dictator, the military firebrand, the armament manufacturer and war profiteer, the threat of retribution from the air is an overwhelming argument for peace. To mostnations goodwill and understanding will bring peace; fear of destruction will deter the potential aggressor."