THE PEACE HYPOTHESIS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume LI, Issue 4411, 6 February 1930, Page 1

THE PEACE HYPOTHESIS.

•‘There is only one practical way of approaching and preparing a solution of the prohlem of disamna,'ment,” says Mr. Wickham Steed, in the Review of Reviews. “It is the way which President Hoover and ■Mr! MacDonald seemed determined lii take when they issued their joint declaration in Washington. They declared that ‘distrusts and suspi- < ions, arising from doubts and clears which may have been justified before the Pea_ce Pact, must now .cease to influence our national policy.’ The question which all Stages should be .required to answer, is: ‘Prom what quarter do you fear attack?” All the signatories of the Peace 'Pact have renounced the idea of attacking any other .State. Even if allowances he made for those States which may have to repel attack from uncivilised neighbours, or from countries which, like Russia, cannot be looked upon as standing altogether within the pale of civilisation, there remains a wide field for honest agreement between peoples which are exposed to no such dangers. ... If Great Britain and the United States stickle the peace hypothesis as the dominant postulate of the London Naval Conference, an international agreement will/be concluded, whether or no Prance and Italy adhere immediately to it. The conference will be a supreme test of the degree in which the signatories of the Peace Act take their obligations seriously. ... If, having re-

solved to banish distrusts and suspicions, doubts and fears between themselves, they act upon their resolve, the nations which should refuse to follow their example would pillory.themselves in the eyes of the civilised world.”

A THEORY OF NON-AVAR

‘‘Out: of the terrible experience of the Great War —an experiment that reduced to absurdity all the- old theories of maintaining peace by a balance of armaments —came a I henry of non-war which was embodied in the Covenant of the League of Nations,” Mr. Steed continues. “Out of experiments with Ibis theory, and .attempts to perfect: it, came, in the course of years, the Locarno Settlement and Ibc Peace Pact. Then, for the first time in political thought, the Peace Part put forward the theory of a potentially warless world, in which the energies of mankind would be increasingly devoted to the ‘development of the ideal,’ and the conquest of the forces of nature. . . . . The representatives of live great nations are about to try to find their bearings in a new polilic.nl dimension —the dimension revealed by the theory of peace. Not all of them may be able to understand the implications of their task. Some may think they have •nierely to add up and compare totals of tonnage in various classes of warships so as to provide a revised edition of the exploded conception that war can be averted by it nice 'balance of relative prepared - ness for it. If this conception prevails, the experiment will breakdown. It can only be carried to a successful conclusion if Great,Britain and the United States, at least, bear constantly in mind that the whole- undertaking is governed by the new peace theory, and that the only thing which matters is to find means of verifying and applying it constructively: This is the crucial •issue which should determine slrafcgy in the battle of ideas. If the strategical principle be rightly grasped, the battle will be won, and the progress of the world be as-MU-ed.”