WAR-TALK AND WARS

Hokitika Guardian, 11 April 1929, Page 2

WAR-TALK AND WARS

(Auckland Star). Tlio other day one of the most famous of British clerics, the Rev. R. J. Campbell, created something of a sensation a't Home by asserting that war between Britain and America is not by any means “unthinkable.” %pa rt from the small definitely anti-British section of the American nation, we have to take into account the very large number of people in tlip United States who are determined not to acknowledge British naval supremacy and are equally resolved that if ever war comes again they shall be able to enforce their decision to trade with belligerents precisely as they please. Mr Campbell maintains that it is sheer waste of words to talk of an Anglo-American war as “unthinkable,” and that the obvious duty of the British nation is .to resolve that it shall never be dragged into such a conflict.

No doubt Mr Campbell is justified in warning the world in general, and Britain in particular, that war is not impossible merely because it would be infinitely calamitous and deplorable. What is even more to the point is this, that as a loading Canadian newspaper puts it, war is by no means unspeakable in the sense that people persist in talking about it. “There is talk about it, and the talk increases every day,” and this means that people’s minds are becoming familiarised with the idea of war between Britain and the United States. Some of this talk, says the Vancouver “Province,” is “sober with a great anxiety and some of it is “foolish with a great blindness of understanding,” but it all tends in the same direction. The Toronto “Mail” complains that “many people who declare war between Great Britain and the United States unthinkable are busy thinking about it” and it instances as a most ominous sign of the times Mr Ramsay Mac-

Donald's confident prediction of a coining war that would include both Britain and America. But what, seenis to us most significant in all these discussions and prophecies of future war is that they accustom mens’ mind to conviction that war ol some sort must he ultimately inevitable and they thus create precisely tbe atmosphere in which wars are most easily generated.

• It is true that so far there is nothing substantial in the clouds that, as tile “Toronto Mail” laments, “are blowing up and threatening to obscure the present friendly relations between the two countries.” But the minds of all men are being more or less unconsciously directed towards the idea of war by the process that phycholog-

ists ‘term “anticipatory preadjustment” and under such conditions men’s thoughts always tend to express them selves in action. We must further recognise that many are disappointed for the most part unjustly, with the League of Nations, where tbe Kellogg (Pact for the Outlawry of war was devised, and the demand for a stronger navy, is most insistently heard. Even hardened American politicians have felt: and regretted this strange incongruity. Senator Borah told Congress that the Pact changed nothing in regard to the duty of self-defence; Senator Hale declared that the Navy Bill meant the same thing as the Pact; and Senator Blaine declared that the chief effect of the Pact is “to justify the demands for a big navy.” (dearly‘in American eyes tbe acceptance of the. Pact has not made war between Britain and the United States either “unthinkable” or unspeakable’ Bui the surest way to bring war within the range of practical polities is to assume its necessity and to accustom our minds to tbe contemplation of its awful possibilities. And if war talk were spontaneously dropped everywhere, and the “will of peace” were correspondingly encouraged and cultivated, tin* probability of any future

I breach of the world's peace might he 1 reduced at once to a microscopic minimum.