The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 1930 THE COST OF PEACE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 882, 28 January 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 1930 THE COST OF PEACE

ONE of tlie advantages of defeat in tlie World War is enjoyed now by Germany. This is the complacency with which the nation that caused all the economic and financial troubles of the universe views the efforts of the Five Powers Naval Conference in London at securing an appreciable limitation of armaments. I he German Republic warmly sympathises with the attempts to bring about naval disarmament and also welcomes America’s desire to obtain freedom of the seas. Moreover, Germany is willing to see the abolition of the submarine. .This policy, as enunciated by Herr Groener, Minister of Defence, is to be commended for its peaceful counsel of perfection. hut in reality it is nothing more than the difference in flic moods of the Devil when sick and when he is well. Germany was compelled to disarm and divert her old aims of military glory and domination to purposes of peace. So far, Republican Germany has lost nothing through and from the drastic processes of military and naval disarmament. Sixty-five million Germans are travelling forward with reasonable comfort along the path of peace. As Viscount Rothermere, after motoring two thousand miles throughout Germany, has said: “Business success, not military glamour, is now the nation’s fetish. The ‘Excellencies’ have disappeared; the glory of the generals has departed. One title only confers prestige in Germany today. It is the commercial one of ‘General-Direktor.’ No nation in Europe is so well fitted to attain the highest levels of industrial prosperity as Republican Germany.” Quite so; hut several of the victorious nations in the World War still wallow in economic depression and adversity.

If Germany has learnt that the most promising way to great prosperity and, peace was through the most complete and crippling defeat in history, perhaps the nations that imposed such a severe lesson on a former military Empire will Team soon to tread the path of peace and achieve voluntarily what Germany compulsorily had to do. The fruits of victory to them may he as Dead Sea apples, hut there is at least scope for profitable disarmament. Across Germany’s western border, for example, France, out of her home population of 41,000,000, keeps 413,000 young men constantly under arms, and also maintains in Northern Africa a white army of 60,000 men, in addition to 110,000 coloured troops. Then France still is keen about naval defence, and particularly as to the retention of submarines. Elsewhere throughout the civilised world many countries may have peace in their heads, but have not yet got it in their hearts. Tlie old fear of war lurks and lingers. The advanced nations together spend 41890,000,000 every year on armaments. This sum is about 30 per cent, more than they spent on preparation for war, known as adequate and essential military and naval defence, twenty years ago. Of the total amount expended on armaments at a time when the whole universe rings with pleas and pacts and prayers for disarmament and international goodwill, 60 per eent. is spent by the European countries, 20 per cent, or thereabout by the United States, and the remaining 20 per cent, by the rest of the world. In 1913 the British Empire spent £100,000,000 on armaments; today the expenditure is £171,000,000. And yet no nation has excelled the British in effecting disarmament and economy in defence. Perhaps it is not surprising that the United States should be so eager in its demand for disarmament and world peace. Although its plea often sounds like idealism it is in reality true American materialism. The staggering cost of past wars and wars that may occur in the future has been described characteristically as the biggest bite on the taxpayer’s dollar. Out of every dollar paid by the taxpayer into the United States Treasury, 72 cents go to the payment of all forms of war expenditure. Tlie plain facts before the Five Powers Naval Conference are serious enough to quicken its secret deliberations and compel its delegates to agree upon a substantial measure of disarmament. There are more men under arms today throughout the world than ever before, and all the peace-loving, peace-professing nations are spending more money on defence and armaments than they did before the world was taught that war is a failure as well as a gigantic folly.