SEVEN GOLDEN RULES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 58, Issue 4188, 24 May 1939, Page 3

SEVEN GOLDEN RULES

FOR NATIONAL OBSERVANCE. “Britain and the British Dominions, and if possible, also France and the United States, should do what they have never hitherto done: draw up and publish to the world a declaration of the principles of international policy which they are prepared to uphold, and invite all Governments, including the Governments of the totalitarian States, to define their attitude to these principles,” says Mr Ramsay Muir in his book, “Future for Democracy.” “The principal elements in such a declaration might be somewhat as

follows: “(i) The very foundation of international order is respect for treaties or other obligations formally accepted. When a treaty stands in need of revision, the revision ought only to be made by agreement between the States concerned, or by an international conference in which all States whose interests are affected will have a place. One-sided repudiations of a treaty by any State is a crime against international order. It ought not to be condoned; it ought to be resisted by the civilised world. “(ii) In the relations between nations, all States, large or small, have equal rights, and no decisions affecting the interests of a State ought to be made without its being consulted. A claim made by one State which affects the independence or the territorial integrity of another State

should always be submitted to an international conference, in which both the States concerned should be represented. “(iii) The precipitation of war, before all possible means of peaceful settlement have been exhausted, is a crime against humanity. (iv) In otder to avoid the outbreak of war, all disputes between nations should be submitted to some form of third-party judgment, either by arbitration, or by international conference, or by submission to the international Court or to the Council of the League of Nations. It is wrong that any nation, however powerful, should presume to be sole judge in its own couse.

“(v) The supreme object of a sane international policy should be allround disarmament, and the cessation of the insensate waste of resources that might be used for human betterment.

“(vi) All those regions of the earth which are inhabited by backward peoples, and have not yet attained to the standing of autonomous States, should be administered in such a way as to protect the rights and advance the progress of their inhabitants, and to give access to their resources on equal terms to all the civilised peoples. “This question, which affects all the future relations of the civilised and the hackward peoples, ought to be the subject of an international conference, which should have regard not only to the territorial claims of Great Powers, but to the needs of all peoples, and, in particular, of the subject peoples. “(vii) For these principles of international policy, the signatory Powers will use all their influence, and will take counsel together as to the means by which they can be enabled to prevail.”