FOREIGN POLICY

Hokitika Guardian, 12 April 1929, Page 2

FOREIGN POLICY

PROBLEMS OF 1929

POSITION OF BRITISH EMPIRE.

LONDON, March 5

The year 1928. writes Viscountess Gladstone, for the League of Nations Union, has been an anxious one lor the British Commonwealth ol Nations and', if it lias closed on a note rather more hopeful than seemed likely even so recently as two months ago, it lias' bequeathed to its successor a formidable legacy of unsolved problems. Perhaps the best tiling that can be said of 1928 is that it has at least clarified issues, even if it has failed to answer them. r J he recent discussions and pronouncements, aciinionious, tactless and uuhappj as they have often been, have at any rate shown each party what the other resents in its attitude, and have brought with thorn a dawninj comprehension of the other’s difficulties and point of view. The key to the political situation in the world to-day lies in the position of the British Empire. Can the Umpire reconcile its obligations towards its fellow-tiiionibors of the League of Nations, comprising as they do the vast majority of the States of the world, with the necessity, so vital for itself, of preserving its old good relations with the United States? If it can do so it has saved not only itself but the world. If it fails the result must bo a return of international anarchy. [t. is .indeed -neither wholly just nor wholly reasonable that the whole burden of the present difficult situation should he resting on our shoulders. After the war, in their reaction against President Wilson’s policy, the United States declared that they were “cutting the painter.” and reverting to a position of splendid isolation. The whole course of events since that time has shown that the painter never was and never could again be cut. America is linked today to every State ill the world by a thousand ties of commerce and finance which no gesture can sever. It is precisely because she is so linked and because there is not one country with whose welfare her interests are not bound up in a degree which increases with the passage of every year that she regards with apprehension the possibility of a blockade imposed by the British Navy, and impeding the course of American commerce as a consequence of a dispute in which she herself is neither plaintiff nor jury.

THE STATES AND THE (EMPIRE

The British Empire would not he in the difficult position in which she now stands, and would not stand in fear of incurring the hostility of the States over some dispute which would certainly not have arisen out of any direct disagreement between the States and the Empire had she adopted the same policy as the States; but of “isolation” has proved a myth for the United States, with their vast and homogeneous territory, their rich reserves of natural resources, tlieir secure inland communications and complete immunity from any danger of invasion, the nations of the British Empire, with their far-flung and highly vulnerable system of communications, their world-wide interests and the proximity of tlieir members, the one to Europe, another to Japan, another to the States themselves, could not even dream of such a possibility. In entering the League we were following the policy which corresponded to the real facts. The welfare of the Empire and the League are hound inextricably together, and were we to withdraw from it now international chaos must ensue.

There is one and only one way out of the present impasse. It is a way which calls for true statesmanship conducted on lines which j»re imperial in the best sense of the word ; it is difficult but not impossible. It lies not in diminishing or seeking to evade our obligations to the League, but rather in following a policy more wholly and more unmistakably imbued by the spirit of the League than we have yet done. What, after all, is tho essence of the League system ? It is the substitution of an international order directed by Jan international conscience for that system of private alliances, private rivalries, hatreds and intrigues which brought about the world war and earned for itself the name of international anarchy. In. this respect our interests are precisely the same as those of the United States. The Empire is not in the same position as a nation of the European Continent. No one Power weighs with us so strongly in the balance that we should wish to take special measures of precaution or to call for special guarantees against- it. Our interests are universal. They lie in the preservation of peace everywhere, without distinction, in China and in Afghanistan, no less than on the Rhineland frontier.

It- is essential that we should make this point abundantly dear in our policy. We have no special enemy or special friend; our friends are the friends of peace everywhere, our Jimmies tho 'flisfcurbors of peace. When the United States come to understand this fact aright there will lie no longer any reason to fear that in the event of our undertaking a League blockade of a Covenant-breaking State,, American resentment shall he diverted from the true culprit to ourselves. The United States will recognise that in acting as we do we

are protecting tlieir interests as well as our own. They will not resent our action but applaud it. THE KELLOGG PACT.

The task is the easier since the United States themselves in the Kellogg Pact, at this moment under discussion in the Senate, have recognised tile distinction between police action that is undertaken in execution of the world conscience, and “was as an instrument of national policy,” thus admitting the compatibility of the covenant with the Pact. Mere arcoplanit* of the Kellogg I’act dues not, however, sol\e our difficulty. In any individual case which may arise it will lie necessary to make clear beyond any shadow of doubt that any action which we may undertake is free from the least suspicion of being an instrument of national policy. AA’c shall have to make clear to a nation which is often unduly suspicious of our motives and often lacking in comprehension of the tangles and difficulties of politics in less fortunate regions of the world, that our policy henceforward is that: of the League and the Pac t and none other.

NAVAL ARMAMENTS.

There is one way in which this can be done, and that is by concluding with the United States an early and generous reduction of naval armaments. The difficulties arc not really insuperable. AVe must take as a basis the declarations repeated many times by the responsible statesmen of both countries that it is unthinkable that the naval armaments of either nation could ever be used against the other. The apprehensions 'entertained at present by the United States that their commerce might be injured tlirough our Navy in the event of a war with the outbreak of which they were not connected would vanish if they could acquire sufficient confidence in the true impartiality of our motives—if they could lie assured that our only policy is the preservation of peace everywhere and without distinction. Tim most binding assurance which we could give in this respectwould lie our willingness to accept a generous reduction of naval armament It would have, moreover, the most farreaching consequence in the rest of the world. It would give an entirely new start to the work of disarmament in Europe. Before this gesture the nations of the Continent will no longer be able to cloak tlieir hesitations. Any one among then) which fails to follow our load will stand revealed as the true obstacle in the way of lasting peace, and the burden of the difficulties arising out of the. situation now existing between the United States and the League will be transferred from the shoulders of British Empire upon which it now unjustly rests, to that nation, which by its failure to implement to the last jot the Pact and the covenant is endangering to common interests of the League, the United States and the British Commonwealth of Nations. fl