EMPIRE’S DIFFICULTIES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3795, 14 August 1936, Page 10

EMPIRE’S DIFFICULTIES

DEFENCE AND ACTION. “BOLDEST MEASURES ARE THE SAFEST.” Writing in the London Observer of June 28th, that eminent authority’ on world affairs, Mr J. L. Garvin, reviews the problem of what to do in connection with circumstances ihat imperil the British Empire. We o.uote: —“What would you do?” That simplest of Socratic questions is always the keenest probe of responsibility in politics. We have never shirked it. Last week we dwelt on the gravity of the truth concerning Defence as the issue above every other issue. We promised to draw the practical moral in the shape of definite suggestions for action in time. First let us show more exactly what is the condition to be repaired. For many years and until recent months, under successive British Governments, there has been a continuous one-sided weakening of British power in every quarter of the world relatively to foreign developments. But for this, the miserable crisis in our relations with Italy never could have occurred. There are still more momentous risks and hazards ahead. Whether another world’s catastrophe is precipitated or averted in the next year or two will depend more on us than on any people. THE ARMED REACTION. For our slowness in realising the grim character and tendency of movements abroad, there were up to about five years ago some tolerable excuses. There was none afterwards. In the autumn of 1931, the Great Reaction from all the international ideals cherished by British democracy came into full swing. In five startling and ominous years the whole aspect and outlook of the world were transformed. Japan seized Manchuria, rejected the League, and has never ceased to pursue vast schemes of encroachment on China.

Next, nearer home, the Wteimar Republic crashed and with it fell the chief hope for the w-ider democratisation of Europe. From the beginning of 1933, Herr Hitler became Dictator absolute of a new and portentous Germany. Based on the ideas of iron unification, inescapable discipline and maximum power, the Nazi Reich, by gigantic effort and prodigious expenditure, has rebuilt preponderance over every single neighbour. This advantage of numbers and organisation combined is already more formidable—especially in the air-arm as in all the fearful science and technique of modern warfare—than that of the Hohenzollera Empire in 1914; and it is still rising every day in the relative strength of its entire totalitarian system. Between Japan on one side and Germany on the other, Bolshevist Russia in its turn, has become an armed Colossus bestriding two continents like the Tsardom, but far more mighty, in munitions added to numbers, than the old autocracy ever was. The Soviet State hopes for nothing less than to make itself impregnable both on the European and the Asiatic fronts by a few more years of revolutionary energy applied to preparation against the utmost emergencies of war. Finally, take the events which have convulsed international affairs in the last twelve months. Among the seven Great Powers, Italy was generally thought to be by far the weakest, for all Signor Mussolini’s extraordinary leadership and his cumulative work of reorganisation pursued with unremitting concentration and intensity through fourteen years. We soon learned that he. too, has created, and in the fullest sense, what the Germans call “a nation in arms.” Despite the League and economic Sanctions, he conquered the Ethiopian Empire in six months, while keeping ever a million men mobilised in Europe and raising his air-power to supremacy for all present purposes in the Central and Eastern Mediterranean. SALVATION IN DISGUISE. Two years ago, when precious time might still have been gained, this journal found itself compelled io write these words: “It would be a grim jest if National Government were to end in national destruction.” Even at the General Election six months ago, when the need for nothing less than a supreme effort of national reorganisation was jas plain as it is now, Ministers talked of filling up gaps.” Had that sort of perfunctory temper continued much longer, by comparison with the dynamic energy of the dictatorships, and their completeness of control, the British Empire would have drifted to its doom.

When all efforts of reason had failed we were rescued from apathy by our blunders. The Sanctionist craze had attempted the coercion of a Great Power in arms without recognising our unprecedented lack of sure and certain means to challenge the last resort even in the historic Middle Sen which washes the shores cf three continents. The Mediterranean routes are the central web

of Imperial communications. There we suddenly found that the old command held for generations had been altered to our galling difficulty. That revelation forced at last that recognition of realities upon a nation so long deluded, and on a Cabinet weak enough no doubt in its general composition, but further vitiated'by the Prime Minister’s own habit of minimising and procrastinating lethargy. History may record by paradox that the British Empire was saved despite itself by the Aybssinian crisis and its results. They were a humiliation evident to all the world except our own sand-blind ostriches. Nothing but the humilia tion could have destroyed the conceit. FIRST STEPS IN REORGANISATION. Out of evil will come good and salvation out of failure, upon one condition. It is that we shall not further tolerate half-truths and halfefforts. It is that we shall be content with nothing less than whole truths and full efforts. Now, if ever, we have to remember Cromwell’s order, which, rightly read, comprises the whole catechism of sagacious action: “Neglect no means.” What does it imply in these circumstances when we are working against the clock to make up for the neglect of years? It signifies imperatively, in our Judgment, that we should reinforce all the resources of home manufacture by the collateral purchase of equipment on a decisive scale from the United States and Canada. Much has been done at home in the last few months. The Government itself has been made a somewhat better instrument though its composition and way of working are yet far from adequate to the paramount task of restoring Britain’s defence and power to undoubted sufficiency ; n the shortest practicable time. As Minister for co-ordinating Defence, though without the full facilities and authority belonging to that function in other great nations, Sir Thomas Inskip has brought a strong brain and character to bear. He has done sterling work; he has learned more and more both of the magnitude and urgency of the further work ahead.

Sir Samual Hoare, who had already gained invaluable experience as one of the best of Air Ministers, has become First Lord of the Admiralty, and has thrown himself heart f'Sand soul into his duty. It is understood that Admiralty work in the factories and yards has been remarkably advanced in the last few months. Lord Swinton, the present Air Minister, is thought by many experts to be a vigorous and resolute administrator. MEN AND MACHINES. But all this must not blind us. It is not certain, for instance, that we are diminishing the former distance between Germany’s vast air expansion and our own. It is absolutely certain that at the present rate we never shall achieve that air parity—the quintessential condition of our equal safety—which National Government, under Mr Baldwin, has pledged itself again and again to create. Apart from something much nearer to air parity for home defence alone, we have to equip the Empire overseas with air power on a scale not contemplated before the Abyssinian crisis and the warnings of long troubles from the Near East to the Far East. Further, we have to provide the British Navy with a far stronger Fleet Air-Arm than that of any other Power on this side of the Atlantic.

The shortage of skilled labour and of some specialised kinds of manufacturing equipment still impedes even Admiralty work, well though it has been accelerated within the limitations. Turn to the military side. By home resources alone —within any margin of time we dare count on—we cannot re-equip the Army thoroughly with the latest weapons and mechanised aids; while the Territorial Force is told in effect that it must wait indefinitely.

Palpably the position, as we have stated it so far, will not do. But there is worse. Recently in an honest and weighty speech Sir Thomas Inskip disturbed the House of Commons by his statement of the existing deficiencies in the equipment of home industry itself. “Gauges and machine-tools are the indispensable link in the chain of production.” Then, the Minister for Defence went on to state the shortage with regard to hpth. As regards gauges, supply in quantity cannot begin for some months to come; and for machinetools the process of delivery in any substantial bulk will take longer still. Yet, “it is no good having the gauges without the machine-tools or the machine-tools without the gauges.” “CALL IN THE NEW WORLD. . ” Then, how are all these crucial problems to be solved? The Government insists and we think rightly, that the normal course of trade shall be carried on in peace time with the minimum of disturbance. This has obvious advantages in itself. But it prevents altogether that maximum speed of reorganisation for defence which is the prime requisite of State and people. Wide priority for Government orders might possibly secure sufficient acceleration of sup-

ply for the Services, but only at the cost of displacing the normal commercial production which creates revenue instead of devouring it. We cannot have it both ways. If with comfortable purblindness we went on trying to have it so, we should only make the worst of both worlds.

Here, then, comes in the Socratic question, “What would you do?” There is one strong answer. It will come as a shock to conventional politicians, but we beg them to think twice and to consider again all the circumstances we have described in this article. We hold that the answer we are about to give is the key of the case, and we would adopt it without hesitation. Briefly it is as follows. We have one asset which is unrivalled on this side of the Atlantic. It is our financial power. We would use it to the full. We would use it in a particular way. We would bring into play our ability to buy and import weapons and machines as well as make them. We would solve in this way the dual problem of keeping our commercial production at home largely undisturbed, while expending our whole organisation for defence.

Above all, we would reopen the United States market in the old way for the supply of munitions, machines and instruments. And we would not shrink from the crux which scares the conventional politicians. We would enter into negotiations—and try to make them short and quick—for compounding the settlement of the American debt. The British Government’s demur to further repayments to America, when all similar payments to ourselves were withheld and even German reparations were wiped out, was based, like so many other miscalculations, on the presumption of continued peace. That prospect is profoundly altered. WHAT AMERICA COULD DO. We are convinced that a reasonable arrangement could be made with Washington. The American people are well aware that a sincere belief in disarmament and peace has been the chief cause of the present difficulties of the British people in the sphere of defence; not to dwell on the greater fact that, under the new and sterner conditions, the freedom and power of democracy is the common cause of the English-speak-ing race.

The American supply of munitions was indispensable to reinforce all our own efforts in the last worldstruggle. The same reinforcement obviously would be as indispensable in any future conflict. We hold it to be not less vitally required now for that reconstruction of British defence in the shortest practicable time which would do more than anything else on this side of the Atlantic to avert, if possible, general war; and, if not. to give Britain freedom and all that depends on it throughout the world an equal chance of survival. Were America’s manufacturingpower enlisted by the composition of the debt, the thing could be done in time. The United States, whose potentiality of aircraft production is equal to that of all the rest of the world put together, could supply us with a thousand first-line planes or more with light auxiliary vessels and their armament as required by the Navy under the new conditions; with much of the equipment for the Regular Army and the Territorials; with the gauges and machine-tools which home industry alone cannot supply in sufficient quantity at the necessary speed, without that grave displacement of our commercial production which the Government and the nation rightly desire to avoid.

It must be understood that, in addition to purchase in the United States, we would make the fullest call upon the resources of the Dominion of Canada. THE EFFECT ON THE WORLD. We anticipate the objections. They are inevitable when any uncommon course is proposed. They will be made in this case on the score of men, money, and the interests of British manufacture. As to our manufacture, its own output for all purposes would be raised to the very maximum and employment with it. As to the men, we decline to believe that intensive training could not be made to keep pace with the supply of equipment. As for the money, the cost would be great. But we know, for instance, that in Germany, Russia, Japan, Italy, and other nations the current expenditure on armaments is gigantic in proportion beyond any effort we have even yet attempted. If we could not compete with them in the the financial sphere, when the preservation of our national and Imperial existence is at stake, there could be no hope for us.

The definite measures we have urged in this article would rehabilitate our repute at a stroke, despite the temporary reverse in the Abyssinian crisis. As we said, good would be wrested out of evil and salvation out of failure. A tremendous impression would be made on the world by a settlement of the debt with Washington and the following reinforcement of British industry by American manufacture. Schemes of arbitrary disturbance would be checked everywhere. Peace would be prolonged by the great action of British statesmanship in this spirit.

To Cromwell’s maxim, “Neglect no means,” would be added Nelson’s—- “ The boldest measures are the safest.”