The Daily News MONDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1927. THE MAKING OF PEACE.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 December 1927, Page 8

The Daily News MONDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1927. THE MAKING OF PEACE.

The arrival at Geneva of delegates from twenty-six countries for the opening of the Preparatory Disarmament Commission once more draws special attention to the succession of efforts made on behalf of the peace of the world. When addressing the American Legionaries on their visit to London in October last,; Mr- Stanley Baldwin asserted that it was a far harder thing to make peace than to make war. He added that one of the greatest men America ever produced-was responsible for the conduct of a long and terrible war with varying fortunes—Lincoln. If he had lived in the present period lie would have said it was a harder thing to make peace than to make war, “but he would have made it.” We have almost reached a decade since the Armistice was signed, and the truth as to the difficulties in making peace must be patent to all the civilised nations. Mr. Baldwin, in reminding the visitors of the problems, moral and material, with which the statesmen of the Old World have had to deal—problems by no means easy for the people in the New World to realise—pointed out that in Europe the nations had bound round their necks hereditary problems which had faced them since the boundaries of the Roman Empire burst. “We are,” he said, “doing our best, and we are making progress. Probably, it may be thought that the sum total of the progress

made along the path of peace during the last nine years gives but little return for Hie expenditure of the time, money and thought expended, but it must be remembered that the handicaps have been such as to prevent satisfactory progress. One of the handicaps, which is only too likely to be overlooked, is that France, England and other countries in Europe have been denuded of a generation, so that for some little time yet amongst the men who ought to be coming into positions of prominence in every walk of life, from thirty to forty years of age, they may be numbered by tens where they ought to be numbered by hundreds and thousands.” Perhaps the most important phase of the post-war period may be summed up in the dictum that the democracy of the world is on trial, necessitating specialised education, a process which must necessarily be slow and protracted, for not only has much to be learned, but still more to be unlearned. Even th: ethics of peace-making are so complex as to defy universal acceptance. Naturally it is to the League of Nations that special attention is directed as the king-pin of the chariot of peace. The fact that so much stress is being placed on the subject of disarmament indicates the existence of a want of confidence among the nations, grounded on the fear that so long as a militaristic spirit is in evidence there will always be the danger of attack by one or more nations possessing large armies, hence the solution of the peace problem depends as much, if not more, upon inculcating the spirit of arbitration than upon disarmament. Manifestly no country will submit to disarmament unless thoroughly satisfied that its security will be at least as great as existing armaments gave it. The problem has its negative as well as its positive aspects, so the task of the League is twofold, with “security” as the crux of the whole subject. For that reason it is probable that the delegates now at Geneva may proceed at the earliest possible moment to the business of constituting the Security Commission. The somewhat startling statements recently made by Sir Percival Phillips concerning an alleged Soviet conspiracy to bolshevise Asia, including a resolute attack on the security of the Dutch East Indies, will not conduce to improve the atmosphere at Geneva as regards the cultivation of peace. As the Soviet delegates cannot be relied upon to “run straight,” and in view of “Red” jealousy of Britain, a® well as of the Bolshevist failure to deal a blow at the British by hostile operations in China, the delegates at Geneva will doubtless view with suspicion any and every move of the Red delegates to create friction. It is essential that no set-back be given to the work of the Disarmament Commission, and that the spirit of Locarno should be in active operation at Geneva.