EVENING POST. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 2, 1937. DOMINIONS' OBJECT LESSON

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 129, 2 June 1937, Page 10

EVENING POST. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 2, 1937. DOMINIONS' OBJECT LESSON

From the academic to the actual is always an important step. On the blackboard at the Imperial Con? ference study circle yesterday were the letters, written the night before, "Survey of the Far East," but about half an hour's bombardment of Almeria by Herr Hitler's naval guns electrified the atmosphere of the Conference chamber and converted the blackboard to other uses. Instead of a long-range study of what may happen in the Pacific, the Dominion Prime Ministers found themselves Busy with a short-range object lesson set by the gunpowder tactics of a Dictator on the other side, of the North Sea; -. Doctrinaire views of collective security, sanctions, and theoretic international police work are necessarily pushed on one side when actual international police work —-a scheme,in being,sand not a mere concept—-throws up with dramatic suddenness/a batoning incident' like Almeria. Retaliation and reprisals are foreign to police work in a democracy; they are the essence of international police work as understood by Herr Hitler. Herr Hitler shoots first and inquires afterwards. | That is why the Dominion Prime Ministers, in their study circle in London, were able to cut loose from vague conceptions' and to step from the academic to the actual.

From the outer ends of the earth have sounded voices telling Europe vrhat she ought to do in various hypothetical circumstances. Suddenly these advisers have been presented by Herr Hitler, with an opportunity of telling Europe what she. ought to do now. They have also an opportunity of telling Britain herself what she ought to do in the face of this independent action by a Dictator —and the upshot seems to be that they agree that she can do nothing. Did the courageously patient British Government need this advice? If, however, the advice (calmness, and an appeal to the Dictator to be moderate) does not add anything to what the British Government already knew,,the advice should greatly benefit the advisers themselves. Possibly they now know more about the practical end of the business of running an Empire and of confining a Spanish fire. Collective action in its academic aspects can now be checked off by the rather startling results of collective action in practice. One object lesson of this kind is worth one hundred speculations on future events, because it gets away from the vague question of what might be done "if this" or "if that," and brings the philosopher up against the fact that while the | sphere of potential work is boundless, the field of the practical is generally narrow, and is far better understood by the man on the spot. In the interests of collective security, the League of Nations decreed sanctions, which failed, and New Zealand was included in the League minority advocating continuance of sanctions. Again in the interests of collective security, the Great. Powers drew round Spain an international police cordon, which has been broken by the withdrawal of German and Italian naval forces; and the Dominion Prime Ministers, thinking now "on the spot," have, according to one correspondent, unanimously and persistently expressed "with the greatest forcefulness" the view that Britain and the Dominions "must at all costs strive not to be ' embroiled by such incidents, which are not Empire affairs." Does not this advice express exactly the line that Britain took, not without criticism, concerning Italy and Abyssinia? In Washington, the U.S. Secretary of State, Mr. Cordell Hull, may say, with the candour born of comparative isolation: With dictatorship war is always an -immediate possibility. Dictators regard their people as so much fuel to feed the war furnace. It is the duty of the United States to remain completely aloof. The United States may be able (though this is not certain) to maintain aloofness because of America's geographical remoteness and comparative self-containment. But geographical remoteness alone will not give aloofness, and people in New Zealand and Australia should know that. A geographical remoteness that promotes academic talkativeness by people who have never had an object lesson is dangerous if it merely gives

immunity from the first attacks of a general war, with no immunity whatever from later military developments. Sympathy with the German dead, an attempt to keep Germany and Italy in the non-intervention group, and the employment of diplomatic machinery in such matters as the dropping of bombs near the British destroyer Hardy are Mr. Eden's contribution to the mitigation of the Ibiza and Almeria double crisis. The Prime Minister, Mr. Chamberlain, looks over these suddenly erupted peaks to higher mountains beyond,in that later period when European re-arming will have culminated, and he predicts that Europe is facing not merely a. critical week, but two critical years. And here is a thought which, he passes on not only to^the United Kingdom but to the Empire: A British Commonwealth nationally minded may yet win peace. A purely party-political regime will surely fail.