LABOUR AND DEFENCE.

Evening Star, Issue 22450, 22 September 1936, Page 11

LABOUR AND DEFENCE.

SO Tjn IDITOX. Sir, The action of the Labour Party in Britain which supported the Government’s armament policy is capable of a different explanation from that given in your leader. In a recent article on this very matter published in Australia we learn: “Taking what the Opposition (Labour) denounced as a mean advantage. Sir Thomas Inskip disclosed that, in spitl of their pacifist denouncing of the rearmament programme, members of the Labour Party—even on the Pronfr bench—have been begging him to let orders for munitions go to their own areas in order to provide work for their unemployed constituents.” In the same publication the .“ satisfaction ” of prominent members of the British Cabinet with the progress made in armaments is summed up in these apt words“ The Government prepares for war with a vacuous smile of slobbering complacency, when the people want peace and life.” The “ real point ” of the matter is not that “ there can be no security in the world while certain nations arm to the teeth, show a spirit of exaggerated nationalism, and flout the principles of the League Covenant,” but the insane monetary policy governing “ orthodox ” financial policy under which all these nations suffer. When the monetary policy forces each country to export produce, even when its own population is largely in want, a position common to them all, the resultant scramble for ever-dwindling markets leads inevitably to war. That is _ the r eal point ”of the matter, but it is not surprising that the British Labour Party has not perceived this simple fact. It seems impossible for many to understand that a very simple defect in the giant mechanism of civilisation can make the whole function disastrously. Your reference to the “ League principles ” must have been sarcastic. The memory of the betrayal of Abyssinia by this high-principled League is still fresh in the minds of most people, and its complacency and vacillation while democracy is slaughtered in Spain to-day show that it is more the friend of Fascism than otherwise. The “ unequivocal assurances ” of the leaders in the British Cabinet will not be taken too seriously by those who remember that in 1913 it was leaders in a British Cabinet who repeatedly denied what they were later forced to admit had been an accomplished fact for years. The present assurances may well be of like trustworthiness. Some years ago I read the following summing-up of the armament policy of modern nations, and have not, to date, seen a better or truer appreciation of the position:—“ The most telling, nay the on!y,_ argument advanced in defence of militarism is that peaceful people imagine they require the armies and) navies to protect them against peaceful people who imagine they require armies and navies for their protection.” It is not “ effective defence ” against other nations which is now called for so much as' defence against the machinations of those who are supposed to lead the democratic nations to prosperity and peace. Their determination not to seek any means whereby war will be unnecessary is equal to their faith in armaments.—l am. etc., ADVANCE. September 21.