The Daily News SATURDAY, MARCH 22, 1924. STRIVING FOR PEACE.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 March 1924, Page 4

The Daily News SATURDAY, MARCH 22, 1924. STRIVING FOR PEACE.

If the efforts towards the attainment of an era of universal peace are to be judged by the professed views of the nations, there would be good grounds for the hope that success was not far off. It is only when these professions are tested and compared with actual facts indicative of the real feelings of the various nations that their value can be ascertained. Human nature is virtually the same to-day as it has always been, and the primitive instinct of domination has not been eliminated by the advance of civilisation. All the peace societies and disarmament conferences, well-meaning as they are, are powerless to change the inherited belligerency of the human race. They can and do camouflage warlike intentions, but just as by scratching the skin of a Russian, a Tartan is revealed, so by probing the true feelings or a pacifist it will be found that, beneath the surface is to be found a primitive , man who only lacks courage, or possibly opportunity, to become a swashbuckler. Nations are in the abstract exactly what the component parts in the concrete, and, however well grounded may be the desire for peace, it is the force of circumstances that plunges the people into a struggle for supremacy. In the old days of hand to hand fighting it was courage, strength and determination on which the issue depended. To-day it is the scientists, the inventors of death dealing explosives and gasses who make for victory. So horrible has the process of destruction become in modern warfare that no wonder there has arisen a genuine outcry for a peaceful arbitrament of international disputes. Even if all the nations were to agree to a judicial settlement of their quarrels, how long would it be before one or more, i trusting to their preparedness for a life and death struggle, would repudiate the pledge and embark on an armed test as to which was in the right. Nothing is more certain than that no international judicial tribunal, nor even the League of Nations, can prevent warfare unless it has the necessary backing of force to ensure its decrees being carried out. The ethics of a peace programme were admirably presented by Sir Esme Howard when making his first public address as British Ambassador at New York. It was the French Ambassador, however, who alluded to what is generally considered as the ideal means for preserving peace, namely, a union between America, Britain and France for the purpose of compelling peace. It may 'be thought that peace by compulsion is a contradiction in terms, but that is not so. Where persuasion suffices, there is no need for compulsion, but where it does not suffice then the sterner method must be used. It is the same in family life, in school life, in community life and in national life, therefore it should find a place in international relations if peace is to reign. Force—moral and physical—is the foundation of obedience and of our system of government, based on the majesty of the law. Out of the deplorable tangle of European affairs there i appears to be emerging some ■ slight ray of hope as the result of the work of the commission ; which has been inquiring into | the question of reparations. Ifl this matter is adjusted, and President Coolidge appears to consider the chances are favourable, the greatest stumbling block to peace will have 'been removed, but that the danger of war still exists is plainly manifested by j the treaty which is reported to have been made between France and Czeeho-Slovakia, the object of which is, apparently, to effect a union of forces against Germany in the case of war by the latter. France may, through her ambassador to the United States, join in the good wishes for peace, but she firmly and persistently refuses to take any risks. She neither has any confidence in Germany’s good faith, nor any trust in German professions. Her obsession is security, as full and absolute as it can 'be made. So long as treaties of this kind are concluded there does not appear to be much hope for the judicial settlement of international troubles, though that is no I reason why efforts for peace should Slacken, rather should they quicken. There is much philosophic truth in Brigadier General Morgan’s view that “the peace of the world is not to be assured by an eirenicon from The Hague, or an encyclical from Geneva, nor will any international reduction or standardisation of military establishments achieve it. Nothing but what the old Puritans called ‘a change of

heart’ in the sons of men can ensue it. Material disarmament will never be certain or complete until ‘moral disarmament’ has made it unnecessary.”