THE FUTURE PEACE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 216, 11 September 1940, Page 11

THE FUTURE PEACE.

HOW TO APPROACH IT. DRAFTING ;0F world pact. [Concluded.] (By H. G. WELLS.) LONDON. Tie particular Issue on which we •started was the problem of bringing this war in the air to some sort of conclusion. Ihe peculiarities of air war, evident rom its very dawn—Blerjot flew the Channel in 1909—were this: that it was a war in three dimensions and not two; that it abolished war fronts and spread the conflict over the entire countries of the two combatants, so obliterating the distinction of combatant and non-com-batant; that since its opening blows could be prepared for in profound secrecy and delivered with unprecedented swiftness, no country could henceforth feel safe from attack without warning; and that consequently it must dominate the world from now on, either in the apprehension felt by a nominal neutral or in full and declared belligerence, until it is made impossible. Advances in the science of tactics, of explosives and of destructive inventions generally ha' 7 e merely enforced and sharpened the edges of this forecast. It becomes more and more plainly evident to every clear intelligence that at any price the possibility or air war must be banished from the earth. Either man will put an end to air war, or air war will put an end to mankind; that is the plain alternative before us, and it is by no means improbable that man will fail to produce the necessary mental vigour for his continuance.

This is where the fact that our minds are made up of imperfectly reconciled strands of thought and motivation becomes cardinal. Had we the undivided energy of our convictions, we should be planning already the necessary political adjustments to take at least the control of the air out of the scheme of national and imperial politics and entrust it to a fully-empowered world directorate. Federal Governments are not unlimited super-governments; tlicy are special unifying authorities to which the constituent States have relinquished certain carefully specified powers, and it is plain that war in the air, latent or active, can never cease now until the whole world is federated in this seftse, so far as this particular power is concerned. War for Air Mastery. This much of world federation is plainly a necessity we ought to be discussing now with the neutral Powers, and not only with the neutral Powers but with our antagonists through the neutral Powers. Such a discussion need do nothing to qualify the vigour and acerbity of the actual warfare. Whichever combatant gains the advantage of the fighting, or whether that comes to a stalemate, the whole world should be a'ware of and prepared for this issue to which 110 State in the world can be indifferent. This present war is not a war for oil or iron or gold. It is now primarily a war for the mastery of the air, and the world at large cannot suffer that to remain in the hands of any single Power or group of Powers. The less downright "victory" there is, indeed, the greater the prospect of a reasonable settlement. Either by conquest or intelligent arrangement, this much of federation at least must be established qn earth, and the sooner intelligent people set about discussing that everywhere, war or no war, the more hopeful is the outlook. War without clearly stated war aims j js a sort of epilepsy. "First win the war," people say. But we won the war in 1918 and then hardly anyone had the remotest idea what to do about it. This state of agairs seems likely to return again in an exaggerated form if we tolerate this sabotage of the epd by the means. J. So now, while the outcome of the war }a still uncertain, it is necessary not •merely to discuss but to define the terms of an armistice and to have it read}', cut and dried, for the inevitable phase of exhaustion and reasonableness. It needs to be something that will anticipate and may defer indefinitely the clumsy and elaborate procedure of a peace conference. We have taken as our type function the control of the air. It is quite possible to state precisely at the present time what powers would be possessed by that control; it would obviously monopolise air armament, air routes, air controls, aerodromes, the manufacture of 'planes and airships, and it must receive its authorisation from the existing independent States of the woi Id. How far and with what variety of methods it would receive its authorisation, directly or indirectly, from the peoples of these States raises a multitude of considerations itoo complicated and detailed to discuss now. They do not affect the immediate imperative to set about preparing for the armistice to familiarise people's imaginations for' it and to rouse them from their evasive fatalism as rapidly as possible now. Cannot Afford More Mistakes. In 1918 I had some experience of the "war aims" controversy at Crewe House. Are we to go through the bloody business of this resuscitated war again with the came stupid aimlessness? Shall we emerge once more with a jumble o flushed belligerents all making unimplemented undertakings to disarm, without the fastest intention of doing so? Shall we have to face an economic storm ot inflation, social disorganisation, another general strike—on a world scale this time—simply because we will not face tliese coining events while they are still controllable? . . ~ , I do not think mankind cf-n afford that (risk a'second time, and -he only way of escaping it that I can imagine is to go right ahead with the drafting of what will be practically a world treaty of peace now, a. treaty that can be brought into immediate operation with the sighing of the armistice The thing is quite possible, and particularly so as long as the United States remains out of the actual war and in contact with all the belligerents. _ .. . The change of Government in Britain affords the opportunity for a clean-up M this matter. No Germans believe in oiir present good intentions. They expect no mercy if they lose the war. We hand them over botv and soul to Hitler with our indiscriminate threats. let, since it is highly undesirable as well as impracticable to exterminate them root and branch, we shall have sooner or later to make peace with them and work with them again. Why not make it clear at once what our conditions for co-operation are and what sort of common world we intend to share with them ? We are obliged to go 011 fighting until they surrender the air and disarm. Cannot we make up our minds now that we do not propose they shall surrender to any victorious antagonist or antagonists, but to a federal world organisation in which from the very beginning they will have a share!

New Framework Essential. The Labour party, quite as much as the Conservative party, is first and foremost British. Very few men who are making political careers are likely to possess the intellectual vigour even to understand their situation, and even among that select minority, the .power of everyday and use and want will keep them playing on at the old game by the guttering candlelight of scholastic "history"" long after the brightening dawn of the new realities has filtered round and through the drawn blinds. An armistice lias a reassuringly temporary appearance. That it had been considered beforehand would rob it of the flimsiness of an improvisation. It would leave all the existing Governments (or the provisional Governments the stresses of the war may produce) in being. They would simply be shorn of their more manifest powers of mutual injury. Crowns need not topple, nor natural boundaries—so long as. they cease to be barriers—change. Some of the special commissions a preconceived armistice would set up, commissions for the restoration of evacuated populations and the immediate relief of distress, for example, would be manifestly of a temporary nature. They would do their appointed work and fade out. Others, such as the air control or the control of staple production, would remain and become the permanent and not too obtrusive framework of a recuperating world.—X.A.N.A.