The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 1907.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2028, 13 March 1907, Page 2

The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 1907.

Japan, we are informed by cable from Tokio, has constructed a torpedo fired by wireless telegraphy, and at the same time preparations are being made for the holding of another Peace Conference at The Hague. Britain has only recently launched a leviathan ba ttlesld p, and the greatest efforts of the nations are in the direction of outdoing each other in the matter of armaments, therefore the prospects of some usoful results in the direction of international arbitration arc matters for speculation. I)i view of what is happening and likely to happen, the question that suggests itself is, Is universal disarmament possible? And the answer, a negative one, seems inevitable. Wo may preach “Peace on earth, goodwill toward men” ; but the Millenium is not yet, and in the present temper of the nations it is not likely to be brought any nearer by the holding of this Conference, and Britain is evidently the only nation that is approaching it in anything like the mood that would bo at all conducive to the realisation of the proposed permanent peace. Germany is certainly not in tlio proper mood, and her mistrust of the Anglo-French entente is sufficient to upset her equanimity if tliero was nothing else for her to cavil at. But there are other causes, the latest of which is her perturbation in regard to the AngloFrench purchase of the Constantinople Quays and her fear that those two nations may gain the ascendancy in Turkey. Russia, too, from whoso head the holding of the first Conference took shape, is a nation that cannot well be trusted to further the idea of a universal peace, at least until her avaricious desires to annex some territory fronting a Southern •ocean are satisfied, and no conditions •of peaco will be acceptable to her that do not include the possibility of those desires being some day satisfied. The fact that she is temporarily disabled and internally shattered has not caused her to give up her attempts to reach a Southern seaboard for good, nor is it likely to do so as long as the necessity exists for her to possess those advantages in order to develop her resources in competition with other nations. Many times she has made the attempt, and as many times she has been thwarted only to try again -in another direction. When she turned her longing eyes towards the Mediterranean over Asia Minor, Lord Beacousfiekl cleverly blocked her course; when on more than one occasion she coquetted with Persia, and Afghanistan, Britain again and again stood in her path, and her impossible dream of running a railway to the Indian Ocean is a matter of history. At Fort"”Arthur she actually succeeded; but before the iron girder was connected between that point and Moscow, Japan requested her to retire and compelled her to do it when she refused. But still her desires as well as her necessities exist, and the Hague Conference is not likely to assuage them. France at the present moment is quiescent; but she has lost Alsace and Lorraine, and she is not likely to forget it on a trip to the Hague, for her national pride remains tarnished by the defeat of; 1871, and if military or naval prestige can burnish it up again she Fill

bo ready to take advantage of tlio opportunity when it odors. America a 1 ono stands aloof as tlio monitor of poaco owing to her geographical isolation ; hnt oven America is acquiring foreign interests that uro rapidly dragging lior into tlio turmoil of international polities. Swiltor transit and almost instantaneous communication have so inextricably mixed up the interests of tlio nations one wit u tlio other, and colonisation as well ns commerce is becoming such a no eossity to congested populations, that they will have to be protected at any cost, and hence the necessity lor armament ujion an increasing scalo. 'the nations that aro not declining arc those that back up their commerce with battleships and armies, and those that uro lying dormant or doclining aro tlioso that aro allowing others to gain predominant positions in naval and military strength. To upset all this by a piece ol parchment declaring lor disarmament, which ai only enforceable by tlio antithesis ol its own provisions is as illogical as it is unlikoly, and as unsafe as it is futile. No special benefit need therefore bo oxpected from any prop >s.iis for national disarmament; but there is a. way in which the Conference might confer some benefit upon the nations, and that is by confining its attention to tlio limitations ol military and naval power, by fixing a maximum standard ol fighting strength, and confining by international law the forco to be used in international conflicts. Could that be arranged, it would relieve the countries of the world that aspire to a leading position of an immense amount of useless taxation, and enable them to divort their surplus wealth from recurring investments in expensive engines of human destruction to the more peaceful and profitable development of their internal resources.