WAR WITHOUT NOTICE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 174, 10 August 1937, Page 6

WAR WITHOUT NOTICE

No doubt during the week we shall have reports with respect to the aerial mock raids that are to be conducted over London with a view to testing its defences and prot^ction against real hostile incursions of the same charactei*. This demonstration is of course, only a mass development of trials that have been in progress since early in the year. The vulnerability of the British capital, ly ing within what is now made easy reach of Ihe aircraft of possible enemies on the Continent, to attacks from the air has long been recognised and in its rearmament programme the Government has placed well in the forefront the devising or means of repelling th'em. .The first thing that has to be realised is that, if any such attacks should take place, they will almost certainly, in the first place at any rate, corrie without warning of any kind. To such a depth has international morality deteriorated that no confidence can be placed in there being even a short-dated formal declaration of war before operations wfft be begun. That is the state to which has fallen the "boasted civilisation" .about whose preservation so much wordy anxiety has been and is still being expressed. As a recent writer has pointed out, under the Briand-Kellogg Pg.ct, of Franco-American ccjjnception, the signatories, after solemnly declaring that they "condemned recotftse to war for the solution of international controversies" renounced it "as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another." They agreed that disputes between them should be settled by peaceful means. This pact was ratified by sixty-five States, and thus had a wider range of support than even the League of Nations. But there were • reservations, made by several of the leading Powers, and the Pact made little if any difference in national policies. The only thing claimed for it is that since it was signed nations bent on aggression have taken care not to declare war. Japan did not declare w*r on China when il seized Manchuria, and Italy did not declare war when it invaded Abyssinia. Since then there have been efforts to Conclude what are called regional pacts but little if any real progress has yet been made. What, it is asked, is the cause of this wide gulf between the ideals set out in these international agreements and v the policies of the individual nations ? The chief cause seemingiy is that in so many countries the people have no voice in the administration of affairs or the control of foreign policy. The menace to world peace does not come from countries where the people — tho^e who would have to suffer in war — can exercise control. It comeSj rather, from those States where government is itself based largely, if not entirely, on forc^, and whtere war has again 'become, what the Kellogg Pact says it never would become, "an instrument of national policy." Visitors who return from Germany all comment on the wonderful friendliness of the people, but that spirit cannot find expression in any national policy. The leaders impose a fierce discipline, and the will of the people is of no importance, The dictator decrees, and a people, thoroughly- subjugated to his will, obev without daring to demur.