Geneva and After

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 60, 4 December 1926, Page 17

Geneva and After

Viscount Cecil Reviews the Difficulties

‘‘lf patriotism passed into a certain type of nationalism, it might become a grave evil. We saw proof-of this in the action of certain States during the controversy over the composition of the League Council. The policy of the various States reflected the degrees of the nationalism of their citizens. Thus one State went so far as to vote against the award of a permanent seat in the Council to Germany, not because she doubted the propriety of that being done, but because the other members of the Council were not prepared to give her also a permanent seat. Here seems a clear case of preference for national over international interests. If such a spirit spread it must eventually bring the League to an end.” —Viscount Cecil.

ISCOUNT CECIL, who is recognised as the leading exponent of the V League of Nations, delivered an important speech on his return from Geneva. It was the speech of the week, because it dealt with matters of moment, and was the justification of a fine stewardship. The speech recorded in the “Manchester Guardian,” after the remarks quoted above, runs : — “How can disarmament be made palatable to nationalism? Even in this country that is not a very simple matter. True, we are not very sensitive about our army, because, in the first place, there is no international demand for its reduction. , No sane man has ever suggested that it- is so large as to endanger the peace of the world. ,Secondly, we do not rely on our army as our main defence against invasion. It is primarily a police force whose duty it is to garrison the Empire and keep order on the more turbulent parts of our overseas frontiers.

“We have never regarded our national safety as bound up with our military strength. But with the fleet it is different, and rightly so. Our existence depends upon our command of the sea, and every public man knows how easily aroused national feeling is about naval questions. All the more credit to us, some will say, that at Washington we agreed to make a beginning of naval disarmament. 1 agree, though many foreign critics hold that all we did there was to bind on the rest of the world still more strongly than before Anglo-American naval domination. “That is a very unfair way of putting it. But it is true that at Washington we agreed to nothing which even the most nervous of nationalists could rationally regard as hazarding our naval safety. We readily agreed to an equality of capital ships between ourselves and the United States, because we considered the contingency cT war Setweer us a? being so remote as to be negligible. But suppose It had been some European State instead of America, what then? Or suppose, in the interests of general disarmament, we are asked to make further naval cuts, will not national feeling quite rightly insist on being satisfied that nothing shall be done which will imperil our security? “To the Continental nations their armies are what our fleet is to us, with this addition, that they have all had comparatively recent experience of what it means when that defence against invasion has broken down. May that experience never be ours! All the more then should we try to realise how military disarmament appears to a Continental European. “Even apart from anxieties about national safety any effective scheme of disarmament must run counter to national or at least nationalist sentiment.

Consider what it means. Each nation is to agree that it will not raise its national armaments beyond a certain limit without the consent of an international authority, and it must in theory at any rate consent that its armament policy may be the subject of question or discussion at Geneva.

“That is the very least the acceptance of an international scheme for reduction and limitation of armaments must mean. It is no doubt true that the gain would be enormous. With a real scheme of this kind accepted, international security would be immeasurably increased, taxation would be continuously diminished, and industrial and commercial prosperity might be expected to have such a boom as it has never known.

"But those are the ultimate benefits of the policy, and it requires for their acknowledgment the rarest of all political qualities—imagination. In the meantime the diminution of national sovereignty, the interference of the foreigner in our own concerns is a topic easily available for platform eloquence.

“It is therefore of great importance that in respect to national susceptibilities the League should walk cautiously. But a negative policy of that kind is altogether inadequate. National feeling towards the League should not be merely acquiescent, it should be one of its chief supports. There is no reason why it should not be so. Loyalty to a smaller organisation need not be any hindrance to loyalty to the larger organisation in which it is included. “Even in this comparatively small island we recognise three nationalities, and throughout the Empire there are growing up new and autonomous nations bound together not by coercive laws but by free affection. “Why should not the process which has served us so well in our Empire be applied with equal success to .he world at large? Why should not the representatives of the nations at Geneva come to feel that the best proof of their attachment to their country would be to increase their country's international influence and importance by loyal service to the League? “If after six years Foreign Offices are beginning to vic with one another for positions of influence in the League, what may not happen when another generation has grown up and the undergraduates of to-day are the Foreign Ministers of to-morrow? Are we really mere visionaries if we look forward to a time when the reputation of nations will depend as much on achievements for peace as in the past it did on pre-eminence in war? I see no incredibility in such a vision.

“All depends on public opinion. If we—the people of this country and other countries—desire that the glories of peace should take the place of the glories of war 1 , that great and beneficent change will assuredly come to pass.”