Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING GISBORNE, SATURDAY, SEPT 21, 1929 THE NEW OUTLOOK.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17062, 21 September 1929, Page 4

Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING GISBORNE, SATURDAY, SEPT 21, 1929 THE NEW OUTLOOK.

Behind the actual negotiations that have been proceeding between Britain and the United States on the difficult subject of naval parity, there are indications of an important- underlying change in the relationships of the great nations to each other. As one reads the news, one is aware of a profoundly significant shifting of the centre of gravity affecting the balance of international relationships. Possibly the one outstanding fact during the past three years or so has been the close relationship between Britain and France—such a relationship as was symbolised bv the genuine feeding of friendship existing between M. Briand and iSir Austen Chamberlain, If there is any other fact; that can challenge this for supremacy during that period, it is the serious tension that has existed between Britain and the United States ever since the failure of the Naval Conference at Geneva in 1927. These two facts are worth a moment's close scrutiny. Britain's friendship with France inevitably affected the restoration of Germany to her former relations with the European group of nations, and undoubtedly delayed the movement for the return to normal relationships which had been so auspiciously inaugurated at Locarno in 192:). On the other hand, the real tension between Britain and the United States had, the inevitable result of holding up the progress of naval disarmament and of disarmament in general; for it is obvious that if these two great peoples could not agree as to 1 lie policy at sea, there was little hope of anything definite in the direction of disarmament being accomplished by the land powers. There are other two facts, which were almost concurrent in their emergence, and which have had mi (as yet) incalculable effect upon the whole situation. The first has to do with ,the arrival of President Hoover in office, which was signalised by a new and determined effort to seek a way out of the difficulties that had hitherto beset naval negotiations and to find a means of dissipating the differences that had kept the two great English-speaking countries apart. The second relates to the advent of the Labor government at Home. When that government came recently to power, it was at once evident that not only would there be an enthusiastic .response to President Hoover’s mood, but that the traditional entente between Britain and France was no longer the thing it had been. That enctnt<>, indeed, which for the past few years had been the central fact of European policy, largely disappeared as soon as the new Government came to power, and it was early evident that the Labor policy is nowadays one of equal friendship with every European power, coupled with the idea that the League of Nations requires to have its powers and its influence increased. Those two facts constitute what, might be called a fortuitous concourse of circumstances, or an illustration of the guidance of Providence —according to the point of view; but it would be a mistake of the first magnitude to conclude from them that every difficulty will now automatically disappear. Intornatonal complications are desperately weak entities, and the solvent for the obstructions that keep apart the fusing of two different types of mentality is not so easy of discovery as wc are sometimes led to believe. The naval problem is at the moment in the foreground, for example. It is not nr easy problem. It is not easy for the simple—or rather for the complicated --reason that it is not merely Britain ami the United States which arc alone affected by whatever re-adjust-ment may be decided upon. If it were so, there’would not in any wise be the same difficulty in arriving at a perfectly water-tight definition of parity. The fact is that the difficulty is seen in its true proportions when the possibility is considered as to how to apply the measuring rod —or what the Americans call the “yardstick”—to the navies of the other naval powers such as Japan, France, Italy and Germany. In any case this cacophonous “yardstick" phrase does by no means represent; the whole of the question to be settled. Behind this newly-coined formula is the older and more fundamental difficulty of the freedom of the seas, which cannot be measured in terms of ywdmtUta or any kind of 1

physical mensuration. The freedom of the seas has to do with the same old question, which lias never vet been tackled, namely: What is to happen when one of the two chief naval powers in the .world becomes involved in economic action against another nation which is a lawbreaker or which is at war, when the other power is not so involved? It is no contribution to human well-being to leave old questions unsolved because new ones have arisen, especially if the old are fundamental to the new. There are e ,n-----sideratious in international relationships which no yardsticks can measure and no scales can weigh. 'Phis assertion is true not only at sea but on land. In Europe to-day, the dominating factor in the situation is the military preponderance of France and her continental allies, together with its necessary corrollary. the disarmament of Germany. Any widespread measure of disarmament must inevitably destroy that preponderance. Then the question will at once arise: What can take its place? What security can be given to France and her allies that Germany will not at once make it her business to cause trouble? That question France has been asking for the past eight years, and it is of no use to ignore if. Apart altogether from what we would all wish to see, the hard facts of genuine difficulties will require to be most carefully watched. The start which has been made by the evacuation of the .Rhineland is after pll a preliminary move that lias no inherent connection with the larger matter of land disarmament. However, it is something to the good that a beginning has been made and that there arc signs that a new atmosphere lias been created. It is hardly too much to say that the prospects of agreement on the knotty problems of disarmament have never been brighter in the history of the world. A tremendous responsibility rests upon the shoulders of Ihe two statesmen concerned in the present negotiations ns between Britain and Ihe United States, but at the risk of iteration it may be said and insisted upon that the utmost vigilance will require to be exercised by both parties concerned, lest their desire for amicable relationships should so imperil their defences that other people might see their chance and take it.