THE WEAKEST LINK

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 53, 18 March 1937, Page 9

THE WEAKEST LINK

Our Own Correspondent)

New Zealand's Position in the Imperial Defence Chain "COULD BE BOTTLED UP"

(From

DANNEVIRKE, Last Night. ''Defence and "World Afiairs" ' was the subject of a thonght-provoking address given in the Dannevirke Town Hall concert chamher on Tuesday by Major-General Sir Andrew Russell, arranged by the Dannevirke Rotary Club. Sir Andrew began by stating that at Home New ZeaHnd wa8 looked upon as oue of the weakest links— -if not the weakest link — in the Imperial chain, owing to her isolation and the fact that she would be completely at the mercy of any Power which had the domination of the Pacific Ocean. In the event of a war in which the British Commonwealt^ was unsttccessful, and in which it definitely lost the command of the Pacific, the victor" would not take the trouble to invade New Zealand, for there would be no need. During the course of the war raidft might have taken place, and for those the Dominion would have to be prepared. Nations, however, did not go wa^ting munitxons On bombarding towns, exeept possibly for some moral effect, nor did they waste life in attempting invasion of ' a country such as New Zealand, when all they would have to do would be to stand on one side and say, "There are certain thingfs we want from you: The free entry of our nationals, certain favourable trade relations." Those things might make it diffieult for some of New Zealand 's secondary industries to carry on, but. txnletss the country were prepared to agree to the terms it could ,be bottled up until further orders. "The British Navy has been and remains the shield behind which we have been able in the first place to settle this country," said Sir Andrew, " a task which fell to our fathers, then. to develop it, which perhaps was the matter of those of the eame generation as myself, and we defended its liberties iu the last war and we are now in a position to hand it down to our sons to carry on the work and to carry on that same duty of defending it. "Without that shield we should not be in the position we are to-day, we shonld be no longer masters of our own fate, and wit]| all the different economic and soeial innovations and experiments, and whatever system we are going to have, it is only within the framework of the British Commonwealth that those experiments or innovations, call them what you like, can be carried out. If the structure falls wo shall be told exactly what we have to do aud we shall have to fall in whether it be Communism or Fascism or any other of those abominable ' isms ' from which we f ortunately do not suffer out here yet, and I hope never will.", Need For Strength The speaker spoke of the disastrous fate suifered by England after^ the_ withdrawal of the Rouian legions in the fifth century, then saying, "That is the fate that lies( in front of us nnless we, together with the other members of the Oommonwealth, can make ourselves so strong that we shall be wisely left alone. ' ; "To many of you, no doubt," proceeded Sir Audrew, "it was a matter of great concern that the League of Nations failed not only in the Manchurian affair, which i« perhaps more easy to understand, but also in the ^laivpf Abyssinia. It 'was able to take no step to prevent the re--militaT!sation of the Rhineland. The reason, as it appears to me, was that — to use a simile - — the League was like a basket in which were good apples and bad apples. It is no" good putting good apples and bad apples in the same basket. Many of the nations who supported. the League — and, as you know, they were legiou — came merely to cloak their own designs and serve their own purposes, to use it as a sort of camouflage behind whio], they could work their own way and will. To be on a higher level such a League would only be possible if those who came to it were — in Biblical language — pure in heart; in other words, if they came with a genuine desire, even at some sacrifice on their own part, to uphold what they believed was the right and to meet without fear any attempt to impose what was wrong through forde and might. ' ' Britain was largely responsible for the failure of the League because, although she talked a lot of high moral stuff, she was not prepared to follow it ixp. She had allowed her defences to fall into a bad state and the other nations had known quite well that although Britain might growl and bark she certainly would not bite. It bad come as a great shock to most people at Home — to whom the facts had never been explained — when trouble broke out in the Mediterranean through Abyssinia that Britain had had at once to lower her flag to Mussolini. Sir Andrew quoted the words, spoken by Lord Balfour in 1906: "The tnxccess of our diplomaey and power of holding our just rights and yet avoiding war depends in the last. resort on the relative strength of our navy, and for the advocates of peace to be also advocates of retrenchment ip this Tespect is to make themselves apostles of a creed essentially contradictory with itself." Britain '8 Entanglements After alluding to the League 's value in dealing with non-controversial matters such as the opium trade and the regulation of hours of labour, the speaker classed as "pure bunkum" the solemn undertalcing by the many nations never to resort to force to implement their policy, They did not mean it, so what was the use of saying a thing one did not mean? Nevertheless, the principles of the League remained sound. To him it seemed the best course — as it. had seemed five years ago — for the British Commonwealth to withdraw from all entanglements on the Continent. He did not think any of those present were prepared to fight for Memel or Danzig, or to square up the frontier between Poland and Silesia. They might have been prepared to fight for Abyssinia, becau'se Britain as a nation — and this was to its eredit — had seldom shrank from fighting foi what she thonght was a moral prfn-

ciple. She had fought for material interests but she had' also been. prepared to fight for moral principles. Sometimes, happily, it had been fonnd that the two went hand-in-hand. That was why other nations accused her of being a damned hypocrite. "Withdraw . from all foreign entanglements; declare onr policy to be one of peace and be prepared to defend that peace; and to be able to do so unmistakably aTm to what is necessary," advised Sir. Andrew. > Britain could invite the Scandinavin countries and other nations— -Belgium, Denmark, Holland and France — to join the peace pool. He included France because the French people were liberty* loving; they believed iu freedom. Across the Atlantic was the United Statee, alsd the large conglomeration of . States in South America, all of which had the liberal, freedom-loving temperament. In the case of attack on one member of the pool, all the others would go to its resctxe with every power they possessed. It would certainly be an extraordinary combination. When he had referred to the possibility of a hostile Power establishing itself on the peninsula north of Auckland, the speaker said he had heard people in authority state that in no circuixstances would any New Zealander ,be sent overseas as in the expeditionary forces in the last war. He did not know exactly what was meant — whether there would be no compulsion or whether a force would not on any account be allowed to leave. It wa® surely a false premise, for collective sej curity had the support of the present Government. If they were going. to have collective security there could be no questoin of not sending^ men overseas. In other words, the idea of not being willing to send help across the seas was contradictory to collective security. Either one or the other had got to go. Sir Andrew made the suggestion — which he had made to officials in England — that New Zealand could make a vaiuable coutribution to Imperial - defence uy having 400 or 500 thoroughly trained pilots available at short) notice for service abroad. He usually reekoned Australia's proportion five times as great as the Dominion's, which would mean that the Commonwealth would provide 200 to 2500 pilots. He menticned the possibility of much of ihe Mediterranean being impassable for transpoits and food ships in the event of war involving a Mediterranean Power, and the likelihood of a territorial quid pro quo between Germany and Italy if the Fascist Powers secured the mastery in Spain. The next war was not going to be won by numbers, but by the most highly mechanised and most highly trained forces. "Brute force and stupidity are not going to win the next war; I don't think they won the last one, either," he concluded. In another part of his address, commenting on the faiures of the Leagne of Nations, Sir Andrew Russell said: "We in England — I am now refemng to the whole Anglo-Saxon race distribnted throughout the globe — took a course quite consonant with the AngloSaxon instinct. We trusted the other fellow to do what was right, "believing that he felt about the thing as we did ourselves. Some people out here find it diffieult to Tealise that there are certain races on the Continent who look at life and its problems from quite a different angle from what you and 1 do. . _ . There are some races which have __ the same characteristics as the Alsatian dog. They may be domesticated some time, . but in the xneantime it is necessary to have a stick in your hand vith which you can ward off an attack." "It is not true that Germany is suffering from lack of raw materials. She can bny New Zealand wool, she can buy tin from Malay or other plaees, she can by copper from Tanganyika. She has access to raw materials in that sense, but if you are not going to accept goods from other nations how are they going to buy your goods? So the implication of free access to raw mate»* ials must surely mean giving nations more favourable trade poSsibilities than most of them have to-day."