THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1938 ARMS AND POWER-POLITICS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23175, 22 October 1938, Page 12

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1938 ARMS AND POWER-POLITICS

f This week ends with a world doing its utmost to supply itself with weapons. Great Powers not to be lightly charged with a taste for war are as active as the rest. The British Cabinet has endorsed comprehensive plans to remove weaknesses in defence, and approved action of this kind on a larger scale than ever. In France a "drive" to increase and modernise fighting aircraft has already assumed large dimensions, and it is to be supported by decrees profoundly affecting all classes, in an endeavour to abolish chronic Budget deficits and hasten the work of rearmament. From the United States has come further news of bold spending proposals J with a similar purpose. A review of recent weeks need not be carried very far to discover the same sort of energy almost everywhere else. It is not long since Switzerland set out to make herself strong to fight. This particular instance is a searchlight among the facts: when a definitely peace-loving people, living in a country neutralised by the agreement of others, thinks it necessary to look to its military resources, it is clear that there exists more than the usual risk of international conflict. Yet, if all national spokesmen are to be believed, no country wants to fight; on their word, the accumulating clouds of acrid smoke have come, not from a fire, but from a few overheated imaginations. The Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking at a diocesan conference, has rightly said that there is a deep longing for peace even in such countries as Germany and Italy, and just as rightly described the German and Italian rulers as glorifying preparations for war. What of Japan, amid whose people there must be thousands upon thousands as ashamed as Kagawa has owned himself to be about the invasion of China? A world plebiscite would be for peace and disarmament, but the warmongers in these three countries are stoking the infernal fires as hard as they can, with only an occasional holiday hour devoted to toasts of universal friendship.

Their smooth words are not believed. Their actions have made I so much noise that few outside their | own countries try now to hear, with the ears of the mind, what they say. Even their threats are suspect; much more, of course, their protestations that they are really as harmless as doves. 'So long as Abyssinia is remembered —and China, and the lengthening list of Germany's armed demonstrations —so long will there be prevalent nervousness. It may be true that there are conditions of dispeace having little or nothing- to do with armaments. This manyheaded thesis is so inapplicable in present circumstances that it is a waste of effort either to expound or deny it. Particularly is "this have and have-not business," as Sir Norman Angell scornfully calls one fond idea about the causes of war, out of the serious hunt. The plain man knows that power-politics, whatever be its pleaded justification, is itself primarily to blame, and that this manifests itself in manufacturing meanj to impose its will, right or wrong, upon all and sundry. These means are arms; the arbitrament of battle is their only chosen recourse. All history attests this truth. The three States indicted by the Archbishop of Canterbury have behaved so in this generation; Germany not less than the others, for Nazi policy, bent on dominance, took Germany suddenly out of the Disarmament Conference and out of the League as soon as solemn and sufficient pledges of equality of national status were given. Not in that way did Herr Hitler plan the Reich's resurgence, but by the path of assertive might. Who, following with open eyes the events of the past two months, to look no further back, can doubt the truth. Thus is raised the wholly practical question of the effective way to counter power-politics when it is expressed in armaments. The choice is not between peace and war as ordinarily envisaged, but between a non-resistant acceptance of every demand, without any sure prospect of peace even then, and a resistance stout enough to ensure safety for reasonable discussion. Again history bears witness. The second of these ways has proved a way to peace, the first only a way bo eventual exasperation and vengeful revolt. The answer to armaments is armaments ; truculence calls for a confronting, withstanding courago until a sure foothold for reason is won. Man "needs must combat, might with might, or might would rule alone." It is true that, in considering armaments themselves, the lino between the offensive and the defensive among them cannot be summarily drawn, but betweeu their use in unprovoked aggression and their use in provoked defence is a great gulf. This conclusion leaves untouched, nevertheless, the fact that what is called an "arms race" is a palpable evil. It is a race in which all lose. To describe it as insane, with reference to its reflection upon the fitful fever of civilisation's advance, is warranted, so long as care be taken to allot duly the shares of responsibility for it. That its total outcome includes a back-breaking economic burden is obvious. The sooner all the folly and evil of this strange competition is realised—perhaps in some such problematic event as the meeting of an irresistible force and an immovable body—the better for the chances of real, enduring peace.