FUTURE WORLD POLICY

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 95, 16 January 1919, Page 5

FUTURE WORLD POLICY

SMUTS'S TRIBUTE TO THE BRITISH THE GERMAN COLONIES ■ i General Smuts, presiding recently at a complimentary dinner given to visiting American editors in London, said that as the coming in* of America- had been the great turning point of-the war, so the collaboration of America in the future 1 peaceful order would be a factor of the greatest significance. It was for the good ■ both or tho New World and of the Old that the United States . should henceforth take nn ac-, tive share in the Councils of Europe and bear a fair share of the great burden of world politics. The British people had borne unexampled burdens for nearly four years and a half, and to-day they were rejoicing in the same great spirit 'in which they had laboured and suffered. Not a tinge of bitterness or' vindictiveness marred their rejoicing. No hymns of hato, no trampling on a prostrate foe. It was not merely their sportsmanlike spirit which had- seen them through the darkest hours of this war, but it was the depth and breadth and sanity of human nature which shone through their history as it shone through the plays of Shakespeare.

"I have had my little differences," continued. General Smuts, "with, the British psople, as you have had yours, but let, us freely and. frankly admit that they aro a great people, and that their sanity and 1 freedom from petty vindictiveness are not the , least of .their great qualities." The downfall of Germany had been the most awful lesson of. history, and now they must turn from the task that was done to the great creative tasks ahead. The League of Nations had been looked upon more as. an ideal than a practical measure, but it was being recognised now that such a league had become a necessary link in the chain of European polity, for the more practical functions to be discharged by it to he beyond that of preserving world peace. The creation of international machinery would be necessary. - Thp futuro map of Europe would look very, different from the pre-war map. It would be covered with small nations from Finland in the north to Constantinople in tho south—nations mostly untrained in habits of self-gov-ernment, some haying in the past suffered political shipwreck on that account and divided from each other by profound national or racial prejudices and antipathies, and all in a state of destitution. It became imperative to create an international organisation which would to some extent take the place of the Great, Powers which had disappeared and keep the peace among these smaller States, even if it was not necessary to supervise their policing.

The Ccrman Colonies. Some of the German colonies were quite fairly and properly claimed, and would have to be given to the British Dominions which conquered them/find for whoso future development brsecur-. ity they were necessary. It was conceivable that there were colonies which were not sq claimed. The Allies who had conquered and now held them would resist to the utmost their re-, storatibn to Germany, as they could not foresee what course the future of Germany might take. In such cases these Powers could be deputed to hold these colonies, not in their own light but as mandatories of the League 'until the question of their ultimate disposal was settled in the future. It would probably be found at the Peace Conference that the League of Nations would be a necessary and indispensable solvent of some of their gravest international problems. The international state of affairs resulting from the war called for a 'great move forwnrd in the political organisation of the world. The great war was probably as much the result of outworn international law and organisation as of German Irrfperial ambitions. The task would be as difficult as it was great, but where America joined hands with Europe and the British Empire in attempting,to solve it he had no doubt the solution would be found. The history of South Africa since the Boer War presented immortal testimony, to the wisdom_ of the' policy of conciliation'. Tf the victors of this greatest of ■ wars approached the problems before them in the same large temper in which the British people acted on that occasion he had hope that the bitter.uess of this might yet lead to a" great reconciliation of the peoples in the future, and perhaps even to the disappearance of war itself. (Cheers.)