THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS TUESDAY, AUGUST 30, 1938 THE BRIAND-KELLOGG PACT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23129, 30 August 1938, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS TUESDAY, AUGUST 30, 1938 THE BRIAND-KELLOGG PACT

As treaties go —and they certainly do—ten years is almost a venerable age. It has been attained by the Briand-Kellogg Pact. In honour of its birthday, Mr. Hull, American Secretary of State, has called attention to its auspicious start in life and invited the sponsors at its christening to try to revive its health and spirits. There is sad need for this. No longer can it go out of doors without help. Usually, the world forgetting, by the world forgot, it sits in a niche of its own among other archives that have seen better days, waiting until some friendly hand leads it forth. Mr. Hull's interest is entirely friendly. He apparently looks upon the Pact as particularly in the care of the United States. A popular tradition, indeed, places its home at Washington, and the tradition has been fostered by the American habit of referring to it as the Kellogg-Briand Pact and sometimes the Kellogg Pact, in token of a belief that one of Mr. Hull's predecessors in office did most to give P being. This foible of speech is harmless, save that it pushes into the background a splendid Frenchman, most romantic and best liked of his country's statesmen through a long day in which his passionate zest for international peace had convincing expression in tolerant plans and suasive oratory. From his zeal of hope sprang the suggestion of an agreement to renounce war as an instrument of national policy. He tested the idea by getting as far away as possible from "a United States of Europe," the germ of which was already developing in his fertile brain, and so put his novel suggestion first to the United States of the New World.

A bond between the hemispheres,

as he well knew from toilsome experience at Geneva, was required to make all other schemes of peace really successful. Paris and Washington, he thought, anticipating with a difference the notion of a diplomatic "axis," might together achieve something worth while. From White House he got more than a welcome. Why not try, replied Mr. Kellogg, a multilateral treaty open to everybody instead of a bilateral one that might multiply only after its kind ? So the BriandKellogg Pact, with a truly international soul, was born.

Its appearing was hailed with interest, even ardour. It quickened the imagination of the world. In the United States, most hopeful sign of all, many constructive minds carried on the task of reconciliation Briand had' introduced as Europe's great peacemaker. Others in America are entitled to more credit than is Kellogg, whose function was that of a voice. But Briand, honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize, was failing. France, glad to have him at the head of foreign affairs year after year no matter what Ministries came and went, denied him the Presidency that would have crowned his career; an Austro-German customs union suddenly flung its hostile shadow across his upland ' path; soon, ill and sleepily nodding in his chair at the League Council, •itself getting feeble in its handling of the Manchurian crisis, he was ' dead long before his magnificent funeral. Europe, bereft of his genius for shrewd management of crises, slipped into new quarrels balefully prolonged : and his Pact of Paris, in spite of its new name shorn of local limits, lost its chance of \ becoming virile. Fifty-five nations had signified acceptance of it, but enthusiasm stopped short of practical loyalty to its ideal. A preference for regional pacts elbowed it aside; an effort to combine it with the League Covenant dwindled to verbal disputation; even the spirit of the Locarno treaties faded away. A blow most damaging to the splendidly simple renunciation of war was struck when Russia and China, suddenly in armed conflict over the Chinese Eastern Railway, turned ears equally deaf to reminders of their signatures. The great pact never recovered. Many had detected an innate weakness in it. Rightly, it bound no signatory to relinquish the right to defend itself against an aggressor; and an explicit proviso declared that any signatory "which may seek to promote its national interests by resort to war" should be denied any benefits accruing under the treaty: but means to organise combined defence of those assailed and to discipline those defiant of the purpose were not made available. This is to-day the Achilles heel of America's admonition. "In the face of the grave European situation," says Mr. Hull, "Governments and peoples cannot be unmindful of their obligations and responsibilities for the observance of the pledges made ten years ago." But they can be, and are. With all due respect to him, and to the ideal of which he gives reminder, there is no more than moral merit in his plea. That merit, in its own sphere, is lofty beyond denial, but as things are in a world composed of a medley of national policies it is futile to dispense with practical measures to impress the enormity of resort to war "as an instrument of national* policy in the settlement of disputes." It is not enough, unfortunately, to exhort aggressors to be good. Causes of quarrel are easily manufactured as excuses for attack. Italy could provide ostensible reasons for overrunning Abyssinia, and Japan has asserted justification she deems sufficient for ruthlessly invading China. In the Nazi philosophy of so-called "race" Germany professes to have an invincible case for menacing Czechoslovakia. By the enlightened conscience of truly civilised nations all such actions are unhesitatingly condemned as barbarous, and no pains should be spared to make that condemnation severely vocal. But what if the piiscreants will not listen]