CAUSE OF PEACE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 May 1939, Page 6

CAUSE OF PEACE

LEAGUE OF NATIONS & ITS INFLUENCE SUPPORT FOR PRINCIPLES URGED. I MRS T. R. BARRER’S ADDRESS. “The past year has been full-of perplexities for believers in world peace and the League of Nations,” observed the president, Mrs T. R. Barrel’, at last night’s annual meeting of the Masterton branch of the League of Nations Union. For over twenty years, she added, the League of Nations Union had worked for peace along the only lines by which it believed it could be secured. The procedure of the Covenant, which the union was formed to support, rested on two principles of equal importance and inseparable. - The first was the principle of conciliation, which was the willingness to listen to grievances and remove real injustices ahd to submit the settlement of the disputes to collective judgment. The second Was the principle of collective resistance to threatened force. Peace could be assured only by the simultaneous application of those two principles. The union had always supported the British Government when its policy was in accordance with those principles and had always criticised it when its actions were inconsistent with them. The union had protested strongly against the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and had pointed out that it was part of. a settled policy of domination in Central Europe, which would be carried out step by step unless the peace*ioving nations took a firm stand. THE APPEASEMENT DISASTER. Had the policy of the British Government been based on the above two principles of the Covenant of the League, the union believed more grievances would have been adjusted peacefully, fear of aggression would have been diminished and peace would have been a reasonable hope. The policy of appeasement pursued by the British Government, which was the cause of the resignation of Mr Anthony Eden a firm supporter of League principles, had brought us to the brink of war and had recently been the cause of a flagrant example of treachery to a brave well-armed, loyal ally without in any- degree lessening the prospect of a plunge into world chaos. VIOLATION OF COVENANT. The Munich Agreement was a clear example of violation of the League Covenant. The hurried decisions arrived at by one or two negotiators uirder threat of war, four Powers taking it oh themselves to settle the destiny of other countries, and the countries concerned having no voice in the decision-—all that was contrary to the principle of the Covenant. The policy of appeasement had been mistaken for fear and the totalitarian States marched on their predetermined way becoming stronger with each new victim. After having sacrificed honour without removing the danger of war, Britain finally had to take a stand that, if taken originally at League meetings, would have progressively saved Mahchuria, Abyssinia, . Spain, China, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Albania and would have kept the League pdwerful and its members loyal. It was easy to criticise ahd none could question the sincere defeire or great personal efforts made by Mr Chamberlain for world peace, the tragedy was that his efforts at conciliation and his later threat of resistance were made separately and too late. The hour was grave, but it was not an hour for doubt or despair but for high-hearted resolve. Other nations how enslaved looked to the free nations to stand together and to save the world ahd it was for the Union to take the lead in support of that cause, which was tlie Cause of the League of Nations.

AMERICAN SUPPORT. There was the economic and moral support of the United States of America and its possible abandonment of its principle of neutrality. More and more the United States had identified itself with the humanitarian work of the League and had announced its intention to increase and continue that collaboration in the health, social, economic and financial fields of the League’s activities. Again the success of the’ Pan-American Conference at Lima, greeted with Nazi sheers, was a lesson to the world. There the United States was no longer regarded as the big bully, but rather as the big brother.There was also a great body of ordinary everyday folk who shuddered at the name of war and all it involved. And greatest of all, because its driving force was spiritual, was the growing urge among; all countries for moral rearmament.

PAYING..THE PRICE. It was the fashion of the unthinking to make the League of Nations the scapegoat for the evils tnat had fallen upon the world. Actually it was disloyalty to the League, and to those Christian principles upon which its Covenant was built, for which the world had to pay such a price. The price was seen in the heavy burden of armaments which must ultimately, even if there were no war, result in unemployment on an equally vast scale; it was seen in concentration camps, prisons, tortured Jews, starving, homeless refugees and the mangled bodies of women and once laughing children. And soon, said the enemies of Great Britain, we will have given away everyone else’s country and there will be nothing to pay with but our own. We had just celebrated Anzac Day with all reverence and pride. The nations had sacrificed millions of the flower of their youth in the war that was to end all war. Every resource and capacity for assistance was strained to the utmost during its progress. Yet the machinery that was set up to ensure permanent peace to a warweary world had been neglected. It had been starved for lack of funds and had been insufficiently backed by public opinion. Those who could spend themselves to the utmost to win a war had made few corresponding efforts for peace. In conclusion, Mrs Barrer quoted a declaration by the Archbishop of Canterbury: —“If we have learned the lesson of the crisis, it will be a fresh impetus to work -for the League of Nations.” In a general discussion which followed Mrs Barrer’s address Mr G. R. Sykes spoke in support of Mr Chamberlain's policy. A resolution was passed to the effect that in the event of a national emergency the organisation would hold itself in readiness for any 7 form of national service required.