ECONOMIC BOYCOTT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22213, 16 March 1934, Page 10

ECONOMIC BOYCOTT

A WEAPON FOR PEACE (From' Ouk Own Correspondent.) LONDON, January 23. Speaking at the dinner of the National Union of Manufacturers at Birmingham, Sir Edward Grigg, M.P., proposed that the Empire and the United States should combine their economic power as a weapon against any nation which broke the law. German rearmament in some measure was certain, he said. It was true that a great people could not be permanently held down in a state of inferiority, nor had we ever wished that Germany should be permanently outlawed as a Power not entitled to the rights of other free Powers. But we had our rights, if she had hers; and if we agreed to free Germany from the military clauses the Treaty of Versailles, we were entitled to insist that her armaments should be fixed at a reasonable level by comparison with other Powers and that she should not plunge Europe again into that competition in armaments which led to Armageddon, in 1914. If Germany sought again to begin a race in armaments, she should be made to feel the full weight of both our moral and our material disapproval. We must have an agreement for the limitation of armaments, and we must face the cost, whatever it might be. There would be no agreement to limit armaments in Europe unless we joined in a comman undertaking with other Powers to act together against any Power which threatened or resorted to aggressive war. All Powers must bind themselves not to be neutral when any Power broke the treaties which constituted international law. If that idea were sure to be adopted by the British Empire and the United States, war would become too precarious to commend itself to even the strongest Power as a business enterprise, and there would be a new security for peace such as the world had never known. Our Government should here and now take the lead and pledge themselves to active non-neutrality against any Power that broke the law, if the other great Powers would pledge themselves likewise.

“ Active non-neutrality ” did not mean that this country should bind itself to send armies to Europe, or anywhere else, in defence of the law. It meant pledging ourselves to use our greatest historic weapon, economic power, against any nation that broke the law —to isolate it and boycot it, both financially and in its trade, and to refuse all business or other intercourse until it came to terms. If the Empire and the United States combined their economic power it would be invincible, and the world would be a different place. Let us then put the proposal forward. It would put new heart into those Powers which genuinely desired a limitation of armaments, ns wo did ourselves. The future of Europe depended on our initiative. If the plan was proposed and adopted by other Powers we might secure an agreement to limit armaments which would greatly reduce the cost of our defences. Our defences were not adequate at present. We were running risks which wo ought not to run. The new danger of this century was in the air, and we must realise that our air frontier was not the coast of the Low Countries, but rather the Rhine. We must have an Air Force equal to that of any other Power, and we must have trained, pilots in reserve, as Germany already had in numbers much larger than ours. The state of the navy, also, was well below the minimum required for the security of the Empire and its trade. We not only needed more ships—defensive ships —but we ought to see our existing ships more frequently at sea. The Royal Navy was becoming much too much of a shore service, utterly against its will. It was fantastic to fritter away money in doles to the shipbuilding trades and even in the Government dockyards when our need of new ships was so acute. ' No British Government could long deserve the name of national which neglected the navy and forfeited our historic prestige on the seven seas.