WORLD AFFAIRS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 229, 27 September 1928, Page 6

WORLD AFFAIRS.

A WEEKLY REVIEW.

(By BYSTANDER.)

I A gTeat deal of superfluous mystery and melodrama has been -worked up over the AngloFrench naval compromise, and the Americans have done their best to make political capital out of it. By this time, however, people in general should be well aware that, though the details of the agreement were kept a secret from the world at large, the American Government knew all about them. For the British Foreign Office, with its traditional respect for "correct" diplomacy, submitted the full text to Washington at the earliest opportunity It is not for me to suggest why the American Government has not explained to the American people that it understands the whole situation, and that neither Britain nor France can be charged with anything surreptitious or underhand. But it is even more difficult to explain why the American Government has delayed its answer to Britain's inquiries on the subject for so long a time. A Washington cable message dated September 24 informs us that the draft reply to Britain and France is "still before the President." And this means that the responsibility and the blame for this long delay, and for all the consequent sensational rumours concerning the AngloFrench naval compromise, belong not to France or to Britain, but to the United States.

A Patriotic Statesman.

By the death of Sarwat Pasha, Egypt loses the services of one of its outstanding patriots and public men—perhaps the only politician in the country whom the European Powers in general, and Britain in particular, could treat with confidence. He had held many important political offices in hie own country, and he had always been regarded as a "moderate," exercising considerable powers of restraint over the Wafd or extreme Nationalist Party. But his chief claim to our recognition is the part he played in arranging the treaty between Britain and Egypt in the early part of this year. The treaty was regarded by Britain as a concession to the Egyptian Nationalists. But though it modified to some extent the terms of the Declaration of 1922, by which the political status of Egypt was defined, it maintained Britain's paramount position in regard to all essential points—control of the army, of foreign affairs, of the Suez Canal area and of! the Sudan. For these reasons it was repudiated by the Wafd and rejected by the Egyptian) Assembly. Sarwat Pasha then resigned hU post as Minister of Foreign Affairs. But no doubt King Fuad was guided largely by his advice in proroguing Parliament recently and suspending the Constitution so as to checkmate the Wafd. It is to be feared that Sarwat's moderating influence will be seriously missed, and our own Foreign Oflice is doubtless quite sincere in the messages of condolence and sympathy that it has forwarded to the Egyptian Government. The Voice of Russia. The people who still cling to some sort of faith in Bolshevism must be hard put to it to explain the pronouncements of the Soviet Government on this great question of war. The Bolshevik dictators and the Third International, with which they are so closely associated, have constantly denounced war, and have charged the "capitalist'' nations with promoting and fomenting it to serve their own evil purposes. A few months ago a Russian delegate sent to Geneva for the purpose not only asserted that his government was devoted to tho cause of world peace, but submitted a scheme for complete and immediate disarmament, in which Russia was to lead the way for the rest of the world. Since then Russia has signed the Kellogg pact for the outlawry of war. In view of the fact that Bolshevism is based upon the doctrine of the "class war," and that Bolshevik emissaries have been stirring up strife and organising revolution throughout the world for years past, many people have received this "new evangel" with a certain amount of polit* scepticism, and have been taken to task by pro-Bolsheviks for their lack of confidence in the underlying nobility of human nature. But now the Bolsheviks have saved us any further trouble about the interpretation of their words and motives. For Voroshiloff, the Soviet War Minister, has now publicly declared that he and his colleagues "never considered the Kellogg anti-war pact seriously," but signed it "for merely tactical reasons." We are thus officially informed that the anti-war talk of the Boleheviks is simply meant to delude the world and to blind other nations to their real intentions. What A T oroshiloff thinks about the peace question is made sufficiently clear by his appeal for the strengthening of Russia's fighting forces and by his candid confession that "without the Rod army Russia could not exist for one week."

The Doom of Slavery. The League of Nations is doing good work for the world at large by promoting "the abolition of slavery in all countries where it still exists. In this great philanthropic movement Britain has played a conspicuous part for the past hundred years, and her energy is not yet slackening. The British Government has recently brought about the release of over 250,000 slaves in Sierra Leone, many more in Northern Burma, and about 200,000 in the mandated Tanganyika area since the war. But slavery is still maintained on a large scale iii China, Abyssinia, Morocco, Tripoli, and the Sahara and in spite of the efforts of British eunboats a considerable trade in slaves is transacted in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. According to the president of the Anti-Slavery Society, there are still about 5,000,000 slaves in captivity in various countries, so that the League of Nations cannot afford to relax its humane activities if it wishes to see thia hideous blot on civilisation completely and speedily obliterated. Forced Labour.

But there is another question closely allied to slavery in which the League of Nations is displaying a certain amount of interest—the problem of forced labour in tropical countries. The International Labour Conference at its meeting next year intends to discuss the whole question, and v.-i of the leading officials of the International Labour Office has recently delivered an address in which some of the principal factors in the problem are put together. From tropical Africa we .'et rubber, ivory, palm oil. and other valuable products of immense importance to the industrial world. In these regions Kuropeans cannot work, or even live, in health and comfort. The only labour a\ailable is native, and the inhabitants of these vast areas are not only disinclined to work systematically, but are relatively few in number. The British-controlled territories of Rhodesia] Kenya, Nyassa, and Tanganyika arc together twice' as large as France, Germany and Italy combined; and they have a total population of less than thirteen millions. How can so small a body of workers make the best of such vast natural resources ? Only if they are "carefully husbanded and protected." It has been proved by bitter experience that the reckless exploitation of the native races by means of forced labour is in the long run extravagant and ruinous. Quite apart from the moral side of the question, the horrors of the Congo and Putumayo teach the profoundly important economic lesson that the natives of tropical countries need to be protected not less rigidly than their natural wealth. If the 1.L.0. and the League of Nations can succeed in abolishing forced labour among primitive peoples they will have indeed deserved well of humanity.