THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, JULY 15, 1931. AMERICA MOVES.

Wairarapa Age, 15 July 1931, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, JULY 15, 1931. AMERICA MOVES.

The dawning of better days for the whole world possibly and even probably is implied in the acceptance by President Hoover of the invitation of the League of Nations to the conference on world disarmament to be opened at Geneva on February 3 next, and in his indication of the attitude the United States will adopt at that momentous gathering. President Hoover will give an assurance, we were told in a cablegram, from Washington yesterday, that America is not disposed to hold European nations to the payment of debts which they lack capacity to pay, but will insist on placing them in a position where they cannot plead incapacity to pay convincingly to America if they fail to reduce

armaments. The leaders of the Republican Party, it is added, expect to win the next Presidential election on this policy, which will be pushed to its furthest limit in the coming year. It is possible to imagine the shade of the late President Woodrow Wilson watching with a bland smile this policy and the situation it connotes developing in the land in which two great articles of faith prescribe respectively the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar and the avoidance of foreign entanglements. Accepting the news from Washington at its face value, the Republican Party, having learned some wisdom in the hard school of adversity, is taking to its heart the international policy upon which it poured unmeasured scorn and contempt in. the period immediately following the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. It goes without saying that this (spectacular change of heart is to be welcomed most cordially.

No fault is to be found' with President Hoover’s intimation that ho will use the creditor powers of the United States to the end of enforcing a mutual reduction of armaments. Anything that can be done to bring about e general reduction of expenditure on armaments carries its own full justification. It is open to the United States to do a.n immense amount of good, Loth by abating the Shylock attitude on the subject of war debts which it maintained until President Hoover made his recent moratorium proposal and by putting its weight effectively into the scale in the interests of world peace. Even with the United States

doing all that she is now professedly willing to do, it will no doubt be I found that the progress of disarmament is opposed by tremendous and formidable difficulties. Beyond an question, however, tn actual ranging of the American nation in support of the efforts that are being made to organise the world for peace will vastly improve whatever prospect there is of bringing the Disarmament Conference to a successful and promising outcome. It may prove ultimately that the vital question is whether the United States is prepared to subordinate considerations of commercial gain to those of international security. If the United States were prepared to combine with Britain and other nations in declaring an (economic boycott against any nation that violated covenants of peace, the League of Nations, or any ’amended or alternative organisation, would be given a non-aggressive and real power to safeguard peace such the world has never yet seen.