Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, SATURDAY, APRIL 19, 1930. STEP BY STEP

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17238, 19 April 1930, Page 4

Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, SATURDAY, APRIL 19, 1930. STEP BY STEP

On January 10, 1020, when the Treaty of Peace with Germany was ratified, the League of Nations came into being. The high contracting parties “in order to promote international co-operation and to advance international peace and security by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war .... agree to this covenant of the League of Nations.” About three-quarters of (lie \i hole world, embracing some ’>•”) nations, so far as agreement could do it, bound their peoples not to tight. In moments of impatience at what, apparently, has been the slow progress of the work aimed at by the charter of the League, it is not easy to remember the greatness of the forces that are arrayed against effective action. There is the habit of peoples to formulate ami stand upon their rights. There is the timidity of weaker nations forcing them in alliances against a formidable and fully armed neighbor. There arc unmeasured natural laws wliieli* man shares with the oilier animals, prompting attack for gain, and resort to defence through fear. There are the ever-varying characters of the leaders of the people who arc themselves .only secure in power so long as they satisfy the desires or fears of the people .they govern. President Hoover, in speaking of the three-party pact for partial disarmament evidently realises the weakness of agreements, but yet he sturdily maintains agreements as being the, only possible objectives upon which to build for the coming in of universal peace, lie lays it down, stoutly enough, that relief is to be sought through agreements: “Until the peace machinery of the world lias been developed and tested over a long period of years, we must; maintain such forces of defence as will prevent the penetration of hostile forces.” “The peace machinery” is but another name for agreements not to light, but to arbitrate or submit to the decrees of a world court. How many years of test, the President wisely refrains from stating. The tree is to be planted. Its value is to be judged by its fruits. He clings to “agreement” as the solution of the problem, while discounting its irrefrangibility. “All the world needs is relief, but disarmament cannot accomplish that, unless it is conducted by agreement among the nations.” And again, neither in “the rattling of the scabbard nor the abandonment <d' defence is to be found the way of peace.” The solution of the puzzle seems to come to this: Until all nations whose peoples are in rivalry will) each other have a moral standard at least equal to I lie idea! o! moral responsibility in commercial or private life, no agreement can be made which would not on sullieieiil provocation be liable to be broken. The Naval Uonference at London, in this, following upon the reservation in tin 1 Kellogg Pact, is responsible for emphasis being laid upon the permitted exception “except, for defence.” Snatching at this the President; says to his suspicious American public, “We qre stronger for defence ns a result of I lie conference,” and again, “we have been able to create a situation where there is neither inferiority nor superiority in the United States naval strength. 'Phis is in agreement with the pact whereby wo

have pledged ourselves to use anus solely for defence. We are stronger in defence as a result of the conference." The weakness of all this sort of evasive explanation is that each nation remains the unappealable judge of its requirements for defence. In proportion as a nation is weak so, of timidity, its requirements for defence will be strong. It only requires a panic in a community or the coming into power of a weak Minister to enrol and equip reservists, arm merchantmen, and set Europe in a blaze that no pact or world court could entinguish. The world improves slowly; the day of universal peace is not yet in sight. Il will require a surer force than that of pacts, conferences, and agreements before that day will come. When agreements cau.be framed that are not based upon what can be got by each contracting party, but upon what can be given, the dawn of something better may be nearer. Because no miracle has happened in London, and it has turned out that the world of to-day with its international rivalries and jealousies is the same world of that of yesterday, should it be said that the conference failed, or that the world is no nearer to disarmament than it was-before the British Prime Minister and the American President thought that they could lead it on the lines of their own emotional vision and true foresight? On the contrary a great step has been taken. That step is a worthy link in a chain reaching back to tho Armistice in li.llß. The League of Nations, itself, was the greatest step ever taken towards a realisation of the brotherhood of nations. It reached forward towards the realisation of the ideal to which all statesmen and rulers see. even though dimly, and desire. It was a step'that will not be retraced. All collateral movements, whether inspired by the League or not, have been steps to an end which it is well ever to keep in sight. What great steps these have been will be better realised by tho historian. Locarno, the Kcllogg Pact, the Washington Conference, and now the London Naval Conference. The last is almost greater in its failure to reach its full objective than in what; it did secure, lusecurod the conference of the Jive great powers at an international round table of national leaders, who all agreed as to the desirability of the objective they set out to arrive at. They all hated war as much as they dreaded il. They would readily have signed for universal peace if such signatures, without the, educated assent id' their peoples, would have had the least chance of being an effective mandate. The recognition, now world wide, that nations cannot live to and for themselves only; that Alexander's dreams of world conquest, foolishly aped by tlie late Kaiser and his military advisers, if attempted to be carried out in fact is suicidal folly, is of the greatest value. Even Napoleon got himself back to Prance, but he left his army to perish in Russia. What national disaster failed to teach the nations is slowly being learnt by great steps toward the substitution of a law of righteousness. It may not lie in our day but a day will come when universal peace will be attained and armaments will fail because they are not required. But such day can only lie reached by a continual succession of great steps, until the conscience of the nations is as deVply stirred as their interests. Every step is truly a benison, because it; expresses the deepest desire for the accomplishment of what is sought, combined with the greatest permissible action allowed by the conditions of each day. In this sense we may read the lines in Hartley Coleridge's ode:

Viw is thf tin"', remote from human sight When war mid discord on earth shall cease Yet every prayer for universal peace Avails tlie Messed lime to expedite.