The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 1929. THE KELLOGG PACT.

Hokitika Guardian, 21 January 1929, Page 4

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 1929. THE KELLOGG PACT.

Tin: ratification of the Teuco Pact by the United .Slates Senate with a single dissentient, considers an exchange iv in tin* nature of an anti-climax. Only one of the Senators who succeeded in reading into the Tact provision that conflicted with the national policy of their Country and conferred substantial advantages on Great Britain stuck to it is ground. All the sonorous periods with which the opponents of the Tact sought to convey the impression that in some mysterious way it would operate to the prejudice of the United Slat es vanished in the air. They were so lacking n conviction that some of the

Senators even who employed them seem to have, in tlie end, admitted their futility. It would Have been, for the United States, a national misfortune if, as at one time seemed possible, the Senate had refused to ratify the treaty in the form in which it was presented for signature at Paris it originated in the United States, amt a icmarkable exhibition of capriciousness on the part of the United Stale., would have been presented if that country, alone among the signatories of the treaty, had refused to ratify it. The Pact was dcscibed by one of its supporters in the Senate as a revolutionary pronouncement. The desiription was certainly just. The Pact open., a way for the adoption of schemes o! disarmament that could not otherwise he undertaken. It may he regarded as paradoxical that nations which have solemnly renounced war as an instrument of national policy should still he considering programmes for the const ruction of navies and for the develop moot of other forms of attack ami defence. Bill, its lots been observed in an American paper, no nation or group of nations can break down in a moment, or in a year, or perhaps in a decade, that reliance upon force as the only method of supporting national rights that has existed since men first formed themselves into nations. The world must move gradually, even slowly, to the general acceptance of the principal that armaments may be scrapped. Tint the Kellogg Pact surely, especially when it is considered as a supplement to the Covenant of tin* League of Nations, constitutes a milcstqne on the road towards the establishment of a world of peace.