Air Warfare Danger

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 822, 16 November 1929, Page 9

Air Warfare Danger

CIVILISATION’S BIG PERIL Speech by General Smuts GREAT VALUE OF KELLOGG PACT V tiled P.A.—Uy Telegraph—Copyright Received 11 a.m. LONDON, Friday. IN a speech at a League of Nations dinner at the Guildhall, General J. C. Smuts said that if a serious reduction in navies was agreed upon at the Naval Arms Conference in London in January the wa,y would be open for an attack on the more difficult subject of military aerial disarmament.

Aerial warfare constituted the most serious danger to civilisation. He was doubtful about the suggestion made by the President of the United States, Mr. Hoover, of immunity for food ships. As soon as the first shot was fired in wartime, humanising expedients were apt to go by the board. War was inexpressivly barbarous. It could not be effectively humanised. Its utter inhumanity would be its undoing. General Smuts referred to President Hoover’s statement that the Covenant meant the application of force by other members of the League, and that the United States was confident that public opinion would suffice to follow the Kellogg Pact with- | out prejudice to their divergent viewpoints. The South African statesman said: I -—“Both the United States and Great | Britain have signed the Peace Pact, j and are bound to see to it that this great instrument does not become a dead letter, not to leave its general declaration in the air, but to carry it to its reasonable conclusion. If that is done, it may be found that important changes in international laws

will become necessary, which will render the position of a violator of the Peace Pact untenable. There will be no question of the application of force, but there will be consequential changes of the laws of neutrality, which will have most far-reaching results, both for future peace and for the settlement of current controversies. “The Peace Pact, with its farI reaching implications, not only affords jan unrivalled opportunity for the ! strengthening of the peace position, ! but it also offers a bridge between the j divergent views on peace held on both I sides of the Atlantic. ! “This unique opportunity should therefore be exploited to the full. Under the Peace Pact, mankind has I definitely and unanimously declared a j war against war. The axe has been | laid to the root of the tree. Let us j keep hewing it there.” General Smuts, who is delivering a series of Rhodes lectures at Oxford University, will leave England on Christmas Eve on a visit to America, where lie will address the Council of Foreign Relations, the Foreign Policy Association and other organisations.