NATIONAL ISOLATION

Waipa Post, Volume 51, Issue 3694, 6 December 1935, Page 8

NATIONAL ISOLATION

CO-OPERATION NOT A DREAM. In his first platform speech in the general election campaign, Mr. Baldwin made it quite clear that our adherence to the League was not quixotic. Can we live in a state of isolation from the world? he asked. “There are those, not many, who believe that such a thing is possible,” he said; “that you can watch if war breaks out between two nations; that possibly you may be able to trade with both, that the war is guarded, as a football match is guarded, by touchlines, and if the players cross them they are ordered back. Believe me, such a belief, incredible in my vhw, is impossible to hold. Modern war is not of that kind. Modern war is like a convulsion of Nature that spreads through the world, that turns the world upside down, that pays no respect to civilians as such and at the conclusion of which the very map of the world has to be redrawn. But, mark this, that if the people of this country desire to remain in isolation —I do not say it cannot be done—it can only be done at a price that neither I nor you could pay. “A man who is a friend of none is very apt to find in a critical period the need of those friends whose absence he would then realise, and if these islands were isolated and refused to play their part in the world they would have to make an armed camp of these islands and give up all hope of that social progress which is now making such strides in this country and which we hope, if we are entrusted with power, we may see advance yet farther and farther.- Believe me, co-operative effort for peace is not a dream. It is not quixotic. It is hard common sense applied to things as they are. Alone we cannot find peace. We seek it with the other nations of the world, and that is the basis of the League of Nations.