The Timaru Herald SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1935 STRENGTH IN UNITY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXL, Issue 20261, 9 November 1935, Page 8

The Timaru Herald SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1935 STRENGTH IN UNITY

It is not surprising that the American authorities, no less than the vast organisation at Geneva, should find it difficult to check the traffic in arms between armament firms as well as groups of speculators who are anxious to do business with Italy. It can be shown, moreover, that there is nothing new under the sun, not even in modern moves to prohibit private trafficking in arms. Thus Dr. James Brown, president of the American Society of Inters, national Law, points to the prohibitions made in 539 A.D. by the Emperor Justinian, the great Roman law-giver, as follow:

Chapter I . . . . desiring to prevent men from killing each other, we have thought it proper to decree that no private person shall engage in the manufacture of weapons, and that only those shall be authorised to do so who are employed in the public arsenals, or are called armourers; and also that manufacturers of arms should not sell them to any private Individual. . . . Chapter 111. Therefore, God directing our thoughts, we decree by the present law that no private individual, or anyone else, whosoever shall, in any province or city of our Empire, have the right to make or sell arms, or deal in them in any way, but only such as are authorised to manufacture them can do so, and deposit them in our armoury. . . .

Chapter IV. But in order that what has been forbidden by us to private' persons and all others may become clear, we have taken pains to enumerate in this law the different kinds of weapons whose manufacture is forbidden. Therefore, we prohibit private individuals from either making or buying bows, arrows, double-edged swords, ordinary swords, -weapons usually called hunting knives, those styled “zabes,” breastplates, javelins, lances and spears of every shape whatever, arms called by the Isaurians “monocopia,” others called “sitinnes," or missiles, shields, and helmets; for we do not permit anything of this kind to be manufactured except by those who are appointed for that purpose in our arsenals, and only small knives which no one uses in fighting shall be allowed to be made and sold by private persons.

It. is not difficult to believe, in view of past experiences, that enlightened peoples in all parts of tjie world are turning anxious eyes to the courageous stand the League Of Nations is making in defence of the sanctity of treaty obligations. In one respect at least, Signor Mussolini has given the world an unforgettable object lesson in ' the application of a very old fable. At Geneva, the nations are approaching the unity and resolve required for collective action. They are taking their stand for a community action to restrain the lawlessness of one nation. It is therefore of the utmost importance that the peaceloving peoples of the world should note the definite advance the nations are making along the road to enduring peace; indeed, in combining the members of the League of Nations are finding a moral and physical strength none possesses alone: ■*sop’s Fables include the familiar story of a father who gave his quarrelsome sons an object lesson, letting them prove for themselves the ease of breaking a single stick and the impossibility of breaking a tightly bound bundle of sticks. In early Rome a bundle of sticks, exhibiting the same strength in unity, was borne by the lictors as a symbol of law and authority. It was called the fasces, and from that word comes the name of the party which controls Italy, which has Indeed virtually made itself the Italian state.

It is rather ironic that Signor Mussolini should find himself confronted by the international application of the fundamental principle that reposes in iEsop’s doctrine of the bundle of sticks, out of which came the Fascist inspiration; indeed, to-day, as one or two of the more wideawake commentators declare, Italian Fascism is encountering a wider application of the concept of strength in unity—which has been described as an international Fascism. In the League of Nations, Signor Mussolini and his Fascist regime, finds himself confronted by a group of nations, not yet bound in a, tight bundle, it is true, but definitely awakened to the necessity for united action to establish law and order, and definitely determined to present a united front in face of the efforts of the Covenant-breaking member of the League of Nations, and thus by concerted action in support of a common objective, to promote the interests of international peace. It may not. have been possible down past centuries to frustrate the private traffic in arms, but it is nevertheless confidently anticipated that the League of Nations, speaking with one united voice, will make a courageous and determined effort to write new history by instituting the most rigid control of arms and munitions, in a bold attempt by collective action to put an end to the disastrous conflict now raging in Northern Africa, and then to make impossible, similar offences against the judgments of enlightened humanity.