ENGLAND'S GENEVA APPEAL.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 105, 6 May 1933, Page 13 (Supplement)

ENGLAND'S GENEVA APPEAL.

Concluding his speech to the General Committee of the Disarmament Conference on March 16, Mr. MacDonald said: —“There may be, and perhaps there will be. in any plan proposed, risks to some of you. But if there is no plan you go to your various capitals at the end of this conference as you left them at the beginning. You will not be facing a risk; you will be faeiug a certainty. Risk is the alternative to certainty. If there is a failure, the stream of events will drive with increasing swiftness to catastrophe. The real nature of- the alternative must not be overlooked. I have tried to impress it upon the minds of you all, those on the right, those on the left, those in the middle. You are not merely deliberately to reject. In rejection you choose something. You reject the risk, you accept the certainty. I know that disarmament is not an end in itself. It is a contribution to peace. Failure —that means no signature, no agreement. Failure means the choice of the certainty unexpressed and hidden, for the risk expressed in documents. Failure would let loose that passion that makes for war. It would set upon our throats the vagrant powers which do not save nations and have never yet saved nations, the vagrant powers which under the pretence of saving nations and national honour destroy both the body and soul of nations. No; under these conditions, with all the knowledge and all the applied arts and applied sciences ac the disposal of the mischief-maker, those powers will encompass in their lust for destruction not merely nations, but the whole of civilisation itself. Have we not had enough of enmities and war? Have we not had enough of the attempt to settle issues by force? We can stop it. We can turn the tide of fear which is rushing in increased volume down the high channels of history at the moment; we can turn that tide of fear into a fide of confidence, into a tide of goodwill, into a tide of peace. And I ask you, my fellowdelegates here, to apply yourselves to the practical problems of the realties of the situation, and in a spirit of give and take, of common sense and objective reason approach them and solve them.”