TRADE & PEACE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 November 1938, Page 6

TRADE & PEACE

MR CORDELL HULL URGES CONTINUED EFFORT AVERTING WORLD ANARCHY CHOICE OF ROADS OPEN TO NATIONS ALTERNATIVE TO ARMAMENTS AND LAWLESSNESS By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (Received This Day, 11.20 a.m.) NEW YORK, November 1. The view that the United States has a responsibility to exert a maximum influence to help manflind to find peace and justice was expressed by Mr Cordell Hull (Secretary of State), when addressing a national foreign trade convention. “The world is at the .crossroads,” he declared, “but its power of choice is not lost. One of the roads is an increased reliance upon armed force as an instrument of national policy, and so long as the-construction of armaments for such a purpose continues it will be the centre of national effort in some countries. The policy of arming inescapably becomes a universal evil. The other road is ever-increasing reliance upon peaceful processes and upon the rule of law and order in relations between individuals and among nations, as trust in the pledged word and order under the law replace the doctrine of armed force and the practice of lawlessness.

DUTY OF UNITED STATES “We in America are less immediately affected than most other nations by the tensions prevailing in other parts of the world, but it is undoubtedly our duty to ourselves to render the adequate armed forces needed for our security. It is equally cur duty to ourselves no't to relax one whit our efforts to exert our maximum influence towards helping mankind to choose the road of peace and justice rather than the road to war. It is my considered judgment that nothing which has occurred in recent weeks has discredited in any way the principles or the basis on which we are seeking to bring about a restoration of sound economic conditions as the foundation of a durable peace. The drift toward complete national selfsufficiency is far from making ready headway, while excessive trade barriers continue to weigh heavily upon international commerce. The major part of world trade is still carried on by countries which are not attempting to be self-contained, regardless of the cost. As experience accumulates, it becomes increasingly clear that the trade methods of those few countries which proclaim autarchy as their avowed purpose steadily exhaust the countries which practise them and arouse even more intense resistance and retaliation on the parts of others. A PRACTICABLE PROGRAMME “The programme which we advocate offers the only practical alternative to a drift towards the anarchy of economic warfare. Its workability has been demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt. It can be embraced by all nations to the benefit of each and all. Our own best interests and the concern which all 'must feel for the future of the human race imperatively require that so far from abandoning our trade agreements programme, we put redoubled vigour into efforts to enlarge its scope and effectiveness. We should intensify our endeavours to influence all nations by example, and by every appropriate means of persuasion open to us, to return to the tested basis of healthy and sound trade and monetary stability and financial probity. No nation can escape its share of responsibility for fashioning mankind’s choice of the road which the world will follow.”