Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, AUGUST 5, 1939. PEACE FRONT PROBLEMS.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 August 1939, Page 6

Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, AUGUST 5, 1939. PEACE FRONT PROBLEMS.

> TAKING a cheerful view of the European outlook, the Dominions Secretary (Sir Thomas Inskip) has.said that tie British Government has very good reasons for saying id war is unlikely. Observing, in a speech reported yesterday, that scarcely a week passed without some new addition to tie capacity of the Mother Country to resist the dictators, he added:’ “Britain is the leader of the peace front. Unit is one of the reasons why war is unlikely.” . Britain is to be credited with a magnificent effort m rearmament which makes her once more, in the fullest sense of the term, a Great Power, while at the same time her desire to see peace established on stable foundations had never been manifested more clearly. This is a great deal to the good, but still better reasons for confidence will appear if the peace front is built up and extended by the successful conclusion of the Moscow negotiations. _ . In these days of non-stop crisis and international tension, it is difficult to’ form any very clear estimate of possibilities, but broadly it seems reasonable to believe that much may be done 1o avgrt and overcome the danger of Avar by an effective reassertion of the principle of collective security. The agreement lo be desired, and presumably the agreement that is sought, between the Western democracies and Russia is one under which these nations would pledge themselves to. combine against aggression, and only against aggression. This does not mean that the door is to be closed on the adjustment of questions outstanding between nations, but it most, certainly implies that an end must be made of resort by individual nations to smash and grab tactics. If a successful stand is thus taken against aggression in Europe, it should not be long before the effect is felt in other parts of the world, not least in the Far East. As each day and week of the northern summer passes without an explosion, the hope is quickened that the final disaster of general war may yet be averted. A great deal still depends, however, on the outcome of the negotiations with Russia which are now to be continued in parallel staff talks and political discussions in Moscow. Yesterday’s news cablegrams, particularly the reports of a speech by Lord Halifax and of a statement by Mr R. A. Butler, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, gave a considerable insight into what is most essentially at stake in these negotiations. Lord Halifax said, for example, that a task that was very complicated in any ease was further complicated “by the necessity for meeting the new technique of aggression—that was to say, of providing for what was called ‘indirect aggression’.” Apart, that is to say, from the question of meeting any obvious and open act of aggression, means have to be found of coping with the tactics, used ■with success by Germany in a number of instances, of establishing a dominating control over other and less powerful countries without resorting to open and direct attack. In his persistent efforts to destroy the League of Nations and the system of collective security, Herr Hitler has at all times insisted on direct negotiations between country and country. On May 21, 1935, he announced his peace system of bilateral treaties. As Konrad Heiden commented : — No more was there to be a united Europe in which each country would help the other against attack and robbery; there was to be a Europe cut up into pieces, where the strongest (Germany) retired'With each separate partner into a separate room, and there behind sound-proof walls of bilateral treaties, silenced the weaker. Russia and the Western democracies, it would appear, are broadly agreed that there should be a united .Europe in which each country would help the other against attack and robbery, but Lord Halifax has stated that they have yet to reach agreement on the question of the precise form to be given to the definition of “indirect aggression.” The object, the British Foreign Secretary added, was to find a formula to cover indirect aggression without encroaching on the independence and neutrality of other States. It was no secret that the proposals Britain and France had made appeared to the Soviet to be insufficiently comprehensive, whilst the formula favoured by Russia appeared to Britain and ./France to go too far in the other direction. The problem thus raised is somewhat difficult and perplexing. Finland for example, has stated that she would regard an unsought guarantee of her independence as in itself constituting an act of aggression. The existence of such difficulties shows how much has been lost by allowing the League of Nations to be thrust into the background. Mutual guarantees of national independence and integrity bad and have their natural and inevitable place in the Covenant of the League of Nations and evidently cannot be excluded from the scheme of collective security the negotiations in Moscow are intended to establish. If the smaller nations are entitled lo have their susceplibilities considered, it must also be recognised that an anti-aggression pact providing only for the mutual defence of the Great Bowers concerned would be worse than useless.