THE CREDIT SIDE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22610, 29 June 1935, Page 17

THE CREDIT SIDE

RECORD OF THE LEAGUE SMUTS ON THE SITUATION NECESSARY INSTRUMENT. A review of international affairs was made by General Smuts in a speech he delivered to the South African Institute of International Affairs, says Public Opinion. The general was not able to deliver the speech himself owing to illness, and it was read for him by Mr Duncan, the Minister of Mines, He said: " I begin with the League of Nations, because I think it is far and away the most significant feature in the world relations to-day. There is a general tendency at the moment to crab the League, to belittle its work, to point to its recent setbacks and failures, to sneer at it. But in spite of all that could be said on that score—and a good deal can be fairly said against the League—the fact remains that it is the most striking phenomenon in the world relations of our times. "The League marks the visible and tangible coming of a new world order. It marks the dawn—perhaps no more, but certainly the dawn—the coming of the collective system among the nations. And when a great new fact like that has appeared on the horizon of history, the world can never be the same again. " Its successes have been comparatively small, its failures and mistakes perhaps more striking. Let me only mention, inter alia, its repudiation at the very start by its begetter, the United States; its consequent lopsided beginning as a League of Victors, a guarantor of the peace treaties rather than of the new world order; tho constant distracting efforts of certain European groups to involve it in troubles of the peace treaties and to give it a semimilitary character; its impotence 11 years ago in the fact of the Ruhr invasion, and, more recently, of the Manchurian invasion; the notice of withdrawal from it recently given by two Great Powers; the apparent failure of disarmament, and the growing menace of an armament race and a resumption of the march to Armageddon. THE CREDITS.

"All this and more I accept on the debit side. On the credit side I find not only a good deal of useful humanitarian work, and the settlement of minor troubles, chiefly among the small fry, but also something far more important, outweighing all that can be said against the League. "The League has arrived. Young as it is it has at least begun to function. It stands for an indispensable mechanism in civilisation. It is necessary, it is inevitable, and if it were to disappear to-morrow, the day after something similar would have to be put in its place to prevent the disruption of our world. "The world is beginning to realise that the alternative to the League and its pacific machinery is a return to the old system of balances of power, or heavy arming among opposiug camps, and the prospect in the not distant future of another and greater world war.

" People were prepared to flout the League, but are now beginning to draw back before the inevitable consequences, which nobody in Europe or America is prepared to face. The experience has been sobering, ealutary, and as a result we see a sudden and most welcome change for the better.

"No one can forecast the developments of the distant future. But to-day the League is not a super-State, and would not be tolerated for a moment as such. Any attempt under present conditions to vest it with military functions and forces and impose military duties generally on its members would be fatal to it.

" If any fault is to be found with the original Locarno Agreement it is that it was not made expressly conditional on a substantial measure of disarmament. If that had been done the position of the League, of the disarmament question, and of general European appeasement would to-day be very different. Security should never be given without reduction in armaments as a quid pro quo.

"However, It is easy to be wise after the event. But at any rate let ua be wise in the future. The proposed London air pact will likewise fail in its purpose unless accompanied by a reduction of armaments among the heavilyarmed Powers. . . , German equality should be fully recognised, and Germany should be in that way induced to rejoin the League. I have a strong impression that the moment for such an advance in European relations has arrived.

"The vast experiments in government now being tried out in Russia, Italy, Germany and elsewhere are novel postwar developments of a most remarkable character. While they contradict each other and purport to be rival, even hostile, solutions of the problem of human government, they all have one feature in common —that is, their denial of political or constitutional liberty as a principle and their making the individual citizen not an end in himself, but a means at the free disposal of the State. THE BASIS. "The principle involved strikes at the roots of the political ethics which has become traditional in western civilisation and which derives from Athens and Borne and the Christian religion. The rise and progress of Europe, indeed of Western civilisation, has been based in the last resort on the inviolability of the human personality and the pereon's practical freedom and security in a reign of law. " The representative self-government institutions of democracy and the whole system of constitutional liberty have been built up on these deep foundations in law, philosophy, and religion. All this is once more called in question, and on a scale and to a degree never seen before in the West. The entire immense force at the disposal of the modern State is now being used to crush out this spirit and this principle of personal freedom and to substitute for it a subservient mass mentality which obediently follows the will of the political leader or his machine. " I dare not conceal my deep conviction that in these grave developments we see not new life for the world but rather decay, not an enrichment of the European tradition but an impoverishment, a negation of the finest and noblest insights of human spirit, and a falling back rather than an advance in the great cause of civilisation. Man as a personality is destined to be a free citizen in a free world, not an ant in eome human termitary.

"Tyranny and freedom cannot live side by side. My own belief, based on my reading of history, is that these new movements are temporary and passing, that they were born of the neurosis of war, misery and defeatism, and that in a' normad Europe they will tend to disappear. "But if not, if they are going to be permanent features of our European system, then I foresee a very stormy era in the world and a political and economic setback which may cost Europe the leadership she has for bo long enjoyed."