POWER OF NATIONS

New Zealand Herald, Volume 82, Issue 25299, 5 September 1945, Page 5

POWER OF NATIONS

ATOMIC BOMB BRINGS CHANGE

CULT OF SIZE EXTINGUISHED By LORD VANSITTART, formerly Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs.

On August 7, 19-15, the news of the first application of the atomic bomb was "released." When the reverberations have died away, we shall see that it has put an end to much more than Japanese resistance. The political consequences are commensurate with the military and physical. We have all and at all ti'me3 bowed down to magnitude. The basis of the Big Three is the ancient Cult of Size, which waf reaffirmed at the inauguration of the new era. For all its other virtues the San Francisco Charter proclaimed a new apotheosis of greatness ; and now, at last and suddenly, it is revealed as an illusion like most of our material creeds. The Big Three, or Five, were set above the law, and the rest made dependent on their veto. Now they arc levelled—.up or down. Britain and the United States may well resolve to keep the secret; but in a brief period of time it will spread. The Great Ones proceeded to Potsdam. Their conclusions, though like the curate's egg, excellent in parts, are vitiated by disregard for the little. In nothing were these consulted. For reparations they must beg a share of the rich. The Western Allies, by renouncing all claims in eastern Europe, continued and strengthened the traditional heresy of spheres of influence, wherein the greater has always arbitrarily included the less. The new world was being laid on a firm foundation of injustice when, on August 7, that foundation was shattered. The God Moloch

Consider for a moment. One illustration will suffice. For long we set security in the size and number of battleships. The first world war was largely caused by German determination to have, not only the biggest army, but the biggest navy ever. The second was due to her mania for becoming bigger still. Tomorrow, the world. The fetish of size not only explained but justified all action; Moloch was god by the span of his maw. To be large was an end in itself; to be_ little was a sin inviting canuibalisnj. No conviction was more firmly held or freely expressed. "The Germans feverishly forced the pace of breeding cannon-fodder; and even those nations who did not do so were gravely concerned when their census was falling or even static. There was a race, not only in armaments, but in procreation. The mania for numbers can be traced back into the mists; it re-emerges as big battalions or big business. This mismeasurement of success has become instinctive. For 10, hardly have Germany s false* gods been dethroned, when the United States wants more bases—for tin battleships or rattletraps —and Soviet policy reaches for another couple of hundred millions of satellite manpower, and the Soviet press takes up the mechanical mumbo-jumbo of an increase in military strength. An increase now? Why? It is the old obsession in new mouths and .nimls. The answer has come promptly for once: vanity of vanities. Manpower is obsolescent. "Our Great Allies'' Consider again! During the war Churchill repeatedly referred to the superior size and numbers of "our great Allies" —the little ones were little or perfunctorily mentioned —as a reason for some postulate. Thus also almost every statesman or superficial celebrity jn turn. The crude reasoning ran: Russia, 180,000,000, the United S.tates 140.000,000, Britain 47,000,000—and so ended... Now : t is ending otherwise. Whenever it was used I winced, not because we —now a comparatively "little" country—have contributed at least as 4 much to pulture as Russia and the United States, but because the criterion was false and on the eve of being exploded. Well, there is the explosion, the atomic' bomb. Others have expatiated upon its tangible consequence to warfare and industry. Let it be mine to prophesy of its results on policy, which is an intangible spun often to the unperceiving. Yet in the flash, which illuminated the blind girl at Albuquerque—a symbol superseding Saint Paul —one hundred and twenty miles from the scene of the first experiment, many things stand out clear as day in the darkness surviving even the end of an unspeakable war. No Valid Security The first is that the old-fetish is dissolved into thin air. Numbers and size are nothing worth. What boots it to pile up populations, to arm them to the teeth with pea-shooters, when an atom, and not Ten Ton Tess after all, is the last word? Mass will only make more smithereens. For those hankering after increased expansion and the mastery of mpre peoples, for all Such ns do build.their faith upon The holy text of pike and gun cannon-fodder has simply been succeeded by atom-fodder. In consequence, no former notion of security is valid. "Wo have changed all that," and for the better. The numerous will no more find salvation in buffer States, or protectorates, or spheres of influence, in annexing the little lands of others, in absorbing neighbours or, putting upon them alien systems. We ; all promised by the Atlantic Charter to.'discard that illusion; vet' it has clung until tattered by blast, the result must be a reformation of international morals; and God knows they need it. We have come to comprehend that no society is sound unless based upon individual equality. We have not practised national equality, though we proclaimed it in the Moscow Declaration. Now we are near to getting it. Some of' the small nations have uranium. A little goes a long way. An Increase In Gentleness It follows, or will follow, that if salvation lies anywhere, if men are capable of learning—they never have been yet, and only one of their countless chances remains —it lies in a revolutionary increase of gentleness, in the abandonment of presumption on quantity, in a greater respect of the strong for the weak in every sphere. Size has overweened, and it may do it a literal world of good to reflect that extent may soon be nothing but a bigger target. The great have needed a reminder of the moral in La Fontaine's fable: "One often needs someone smaller than oneself." It-was told of a lion, and is equally true of an eagle or a bear. In a quarter ,of a century the Big Three will be a myth, and the notion of "Great" Powers —prime catiso of war —will be consigned to limbo by u power immeasurably greater. In the |iame of the old thesis of selfdefence, history has recorded and condoned a series of indefensible, proceedings, which continued to the very eve of August 7. 1945. Right through the war it was brazenly and paradoxically argued that the any of little Stateshad ended with the beginning of the era of the little man, because, forsooth, thev could not make enough arms to defend themselves. (Against whom?) The most "progressive" economists were loudest in the ancient incantation. And all this in a struggle professing to end power-politics! Against that doctrine I prayed and protested in speech and writing; Now I am answered: the densest hosts are of no avail against a gram of the new dispensation. Men are henceforth equal, even though born in narrow borders. Such a thing has never yet been dreamed. Not the war, alas, but nuclear fission brings to pass a change

of mind, the only, but perhaps the surest, way to a* change of heart. Consider again, and this time in the practical present. Again a single illustration will suffice. Alter all Russia s sufferings, we have well understood her quest for security. We have even strained our consciences to condone it. Our qualms have arisen simply because it has followed the old lines of precaution. I venture to predict with all deference that the set pattern now being elaborated in eastern Europe and eastern Asia will be beneficially transformed in a light scientifically estimated as 12 times more brilliant than the sun. A World of Conciliation

Of the Four Freedoms the most needful is the freedom from lear. Wrongly beheld this terrific new force may increase fear beyond bearing. Thus haunted, humanity must eventually succumb to a complete nervous breakdown, even if not physically annihilated. Rightly seen and understood the shocking illumination may reveal a turning point—a right-angled turn. However big the Big Three may bulk on form at a glance, a longer view will display a vastly different perspective, an equalised world in which the ultimate interest of each, irrespective of geographical dimensions, is not to dominate but conciliate, nay ingratiWho knows what power one hand may shortly wield ? For a million years man has been evolving toward a state where the weakest agglomeration of God's human creatures will refuse to be regimented like ants or bees, but will claim the only true liberty—of thinking and acting for themselves. No power on earth can arrest that march and its new reinforcement. A wise "Power" will recognise that the denizens of "spheres" must inevitably reject the bogus freedom now so freely forced upon them. There is at hand a means of which mocks the anarchist's antediluvian bomb. Lot greatness take warning! Only a world of respect and conciliation can survive; its arbitrary predecessor i 3 gone. , Lo. all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and T.vre. And to think that some people called Kipling a reactionary! (All riphts reserved.)