DISARMAMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 155, 18 November 1912, Page 4

DISARMAMENT.

The editor of the, Strand Magazine recfently asked a number of eminent journalists and others to express their views on the proposition, "What would the nation gain and lose if Britain disarmed?" The result is a remarkable article in a recent issue of the magazine. #ome interesting points are made upon the alternate use of the money which might he diverted from the exercise of the arts of war to those of peucg. For instance, one year of disarmament could mean one million free allotments of gar-

den 'ground of two acres apiece at £25 an acre, with £20,000,01)0 also for the purchase of tools, seeds, etc. No starvation in Great Britain then! Again, divert war funds to fire-fighting funds, and fire, that dread of night and day, might almost be effectively stamped out in the Kingdom. Twenty thousand squads of ten men each of fire brigades stationed throughout the Kingdom would cost only £10,000,000. If fully equipped with stations and up-to-date appliances, the total cost even then would be under £70,000,000. There has been a period of ten years of peace, and yet it has coat John Bull more than £700,000,000 to be prepared for war in that time! And every year the machines that the seventy millions a year is purchasing are being scrapped as out of date and useless. Yet this awful waste must go on. "If, by some brilliant stroke of statesmanship, each of the six great Powers could be induced to agree to a suspension of naval and military preparations for a period of ten years, merely maintaining the ships now afloat, disbanding every regiment not actually necessary in maintaining order—tlien, and not till then, would the present terrific burden of armaments disappear from the shoulders of John Bull." Lord Weardale (better known as the Hon. Philip fjltanhope) is optimistic enough to believe that "such ft consummation is not only possible, but imminent." The abolitionists at Home are asked to consider this point: Abolish the British army and navy, and you throw at least 170,000 soldiers and 130,000 sailors out of employment. Then there are 50,000 workmen employed as shipbuilders, tailors and general artisans attached to the navy and army. Thus there are 350,000 men and a pay-roll of «it least £25,000,000 affected. Still, that would be a mere detail if only the lion and the lamb would lie down together in. peace. As to the personal opinions, Norman Angell, who stirred the world recently with "The Great Illusion," combats the belief that war is a civilising influence, but is pessimistic about peace: "About one-third of the world's surface is still occupied by semi-civilised peoples, among whom police work must probably for many years take the form of military force. The phrase Universal Peace' suggests the cessation of competition, flections, strikes, political differences, luffragette raids, Home Rule oratory, and uany other tilings that nobody outside > lunatic asylum expects to see cease." Mr. Angell seeks a political reformation In England, Germany and France "which will do for the problem of useless armaments what the religious and intellectual reform of the 17th and 18th centuries did for the problem of religious oppression." Mr. A. H. Burgoyne, M.P., the prominent naval authority, scouts the idea of the possibility of disarmament "or its desirability," for "to us the navy is our national insurance." "I do not for a moment believe in the practical possibilities of disarmament or its problematical advantages," is the Egyptian brick Mr. Phillips Oppenheim, the novelist, heaves at the controversy; and, as "one back again," Mr. Israel Zangwill, the Zionist leader, says that "the saving in war taxes would improve the condition of *ll classes." Mr. Harold Bindloss, the Anglo-Canadian writer, is on the abolition side, for "history shows that figlithave become its oppressors." Mr. W. J. Locke, another novelist, ia emphatic: "Until every human being, from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the howling lavage of Central Africa, is certified as a wingless angel, the total abolition of the «avy and army would result in the total tfiolitlon of society." Whilst preparation for war is under present conditions Mie only guarantee of peace so far as the leading nations are concerned, no one tan deny that they are paying a heavy—\ndeed, crushing—price for the guarantee. War itself could not be much dearer.