BRITAIN WARNED

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 883, 29 January 1930, Page 9

BRITAIN WARNED

ARBITRATION CANNOT ABOLISH WAR LESSON FROM AUSTRALIA Reed. 9.5 a.m. LONDON, Tuesday. Tlie “Morning Post” says the Foreign Secretary, Mr. Arthur Henderson, seems to think compulsory arbitration is an infallable preventive of war. Let him consider the analogy of industrial disputes and strikes. Nowhere are they so frequent or so violent as in Australia, where compulsory arbitration is the vogue. Just as the court there is powerless to enforce its verdict on a trade union which defies the court, so it will be the same at Geneva against a nation which refuses to accept the verdict of the court. British politicians would be wise to remember the dictum of Admiral Blake: “The main business of a British statesman is to prevent foreigners from fooling us.” The Attorney-General, Sir William Jowitt, summing up the debate in the House of Commons on the ratification of Britain's signature to the optional clause, said that what the Government, was trying to do by signing the optional clause was to help toward a modification of international law. It asked why the reservation which the opposition desired was considered necessary in 1924, but not no\v, the reply was that the signing of the Peace Pact altered the situation. Sir Austen Chamberlain’s amendment was lost by 278 votes to 193, and the ratification clause was agreed to without a division.