LABOUR TALKS PEACE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 586, 12 February 1929, Page 8

LABOUR TALKS PEACE

THE world has always had counsellors to perfection, and the course of history has shown that the counsels promising so much were often riddled, themselves, with imperfections. The idealist needs passion, and quite often it is that necessary quality of passionate faith that makes him less able to see the difficulties that lie in the way of achievement of his ideal. Statesmen with ideals are not common : more often than not, they are merely practical, and yet in Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, England has a man who combines the two qualities. His term of office has given him knowledge that many of his associates have not had the opportunity of acquiring, and all his utterances are worth notice and many of them are worth study. Mr. MacDonald, writing in the “Morning Post,” has defined the Labour Party’s foreign policy as one of peace and co-opera-tion. This, he announces, will not only avoid war, hut will put thoughts of war and the preparation for war out of the minds of the nations. That is quite true, and most thinking men will endorse all that he says. The only difficulty to be met is this : how are peace and co-operation to be attained? A reasonable answer to that solves the problem that is plaguing the minds of contemporary thinkers and statesmen. As Mr. MacDonald says, it is fear and suspicion that keep the nations armed. There may be no enemy in sight, but there is always the constant dread that a shadowy enemy may take substantial form. World peace will never be a matter of pacts and vague assurances. It will come only when the thought of the w r orld discerns the ghastly folly of conflict. Even now it is almost universally agreed that war is a shameful thing—not because it makes demands upon the physical courage and nobility of individual men, hut because it is a shocking reflection on civilised nations. It dates our methods back to snarling mediaeval times. That there is a revolution of thought against the stupidity of war’s arbitrament is everywhere apparent. But statesmen have not the courage or power to accept this vague mandate until it grows to more definite form.

Mr. MacDonald has admitted that no country can move far beyond others, and a cautious Government is, primarily, responsible for the safety of its country. It cannot go beyond national feeling. If the thought of the nation takes a genuinely pacific turn, then the government can do likewise, but until that tendency is unmistakably apparent, the statesmen must do as other statesmen do. Otherwise they will be charged with trustbreaking. and that is the gravest charge that may be made against them. England, of the great nations of the earth, is one that has the thought of peace close to its heart. She will participate in any practicable peace move, and so far as safety allows it has followed the way pointed hv Mr. MacDonald. Even now England is spending more on the solution of her own unemployment problems than on her Army. This alone is a heartening sign and shows the state of the public mind, and that is what the actions of statesmen reflect.