WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY?

Waikato Times, Volume 105, Issue 17687, 16 April 1929, Page 6

WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY?

It is in connection with the problems and hopes of world peace that the distinction is most often drawn between the hard-heads and the soft-heads (comments the New York Times). The latter are the sentimentalists. They are afflicted with a belief in the goodness of men and of nations, which thi tacts of life, as known to the hardheads, do not justify. That men and nations, despite the horrors of a World War, may be expected to go on fighting; that" world peace cannot be guaranteed by paper agreements; that the best way to assure peace is still tc elevate one's guns and keep one's powder dry—these are familiar items in the hard-headed credo. The trouble with the hard-headed students of war and peace is that on one vital question they are not hardheaded enough. This is the question of America's attitude toward world organisation for peace. Beginning with the League of Nations and extending through the Kellogg-Briand pact and the Capper resolutions the hardheaded critic makes his first appeal lo fear. He is afraid of being entangled. He is afraid of being made the victim and the dupe. He is afraid of having his methods misunderstood. He is afraid of disappointing the hopes of other nations and as a result getting himself disliked- If it is argued that under any arrangement which the United States may enter for the promotion of peace we cannot be compelled to an action that is against our own judgment and conscience, the reply is, “Yes, but what will the other nations say then?” They will make remarks ' about Uncle Sam, hypocrite, and Uncle Sam, bully, and Uncle Sam, what not.

One can Imagine a soft-headed sentimentalist having his day spoiled by what other people say. But why a hard-headed devotee of fact should be deterred by other people’s opinions from doing his duly is difficult to understand. The most hard-headed statement imaginable would be the assertion that the United States is too big to he coerced into doing anything it chooses not to. Yet the favourite portrait of Uncle Sam as drawn by the hard-headed artists shows him always being entrapped and outwitted and coerced into doing the wrong thing for the world and the fatal thing for himself. Hard-headed people are fond of saying of the League of Nations that it is only a device for imposing the wfli of the “big fellows” on the little nations. No great Power will hesitate to snap its fingers at the League when the occasion arises. But if the United States were in the League it would not be so. Apparently the United States is not big enough to snap its fingers, 'or to insist on the propriety of a certain course of action or to stand out for the correctness of a certain interpretation. It is not quite so had. The hardheaded critic admits that there is no action to which our Government could be compelled as the result of any engagement ,we may enter. But he shrinks from what people will say about us If we act or interpret by our own lights. It is, of course, a notorious fact that hitherto, because we have kept ourselves free from “-entanglements,” nobody since the war has said an unkind word about us. No one has alluded to our war profits, or mentioned Shylock, or warned Europe against our economic conquest. Everybody in Europe bubbles over with love and admiration for us, just because we have not signed anything—up to the Kellogg pact—and so refrained from raising false hopes in the breasts of others! What a pity it is that hard-headed people should be so afraid of raising false hopes in other breasts!