AMERICAN WAYS TO PEACE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 April 1940, Page 4

AMERICAN WAYS TO PEACE.

While i f-embodied an admirable, if academic statement 01. the basis on which international relationships should rest, President Roosevelt’s broadcast, to the Pan-American. Union, reported, yesterday, wandered into a world ol unreality in the extent to which he sought to establish a contrast between ruling conditions in the Old World and the New orld. I here was, it is true, an element of frank acknowledgement in his statement: “We know that what happens in the Old World directly and powerfully affects the peace and well-being ol the New World,’’ but there was something at least seriously incomplete about the President’s preceding declaration: We have only asked that the world should go with ns in the path of peace, but we shall bo able to keep that way open only il we are prepared to meet force with force if a challenge is ever made.’’ It is far enough from being true, as these words of .Jr Roosevelt might be taken to suggest, that the Americas are a home of settled and assured peace, menaced only by Hie contagion of “wars abroad.’’ Not so very long ago, Bolivia and Paraguay engaged in a murderous and long-continued war and the rest of the Americas, while they debated Ilie tragedy earnestly and at length, did little more in Hie end than wait for the conflagration to burn itself out. Aggression in Europe threatens the American continents as definitely, though not as directly, as il does nations in Europe which desire quite as sincerely as any American nation to live at peace with the rest of the world. Powerful centres of Fascist and Nazi organisation and intrigue exist in a number of the South American States and have even been developed, though on. a less formidable scale, within the frontiers ol the Unit ed St ales. Not hing is more certain, than that if the West er n democracies were defeated in the present war, totalitarian aggression in South America would speedily become an unpleasant reality. The glowhng picture ol’ Pan-American peace painted by President Roosevelt would then bo remembered, il it were remembered al all, only as an effort of poetic laney. The simple truth is that in their war against Nazi Germany, the Western democracies are fighting io safeguard the Itilure of all free nations intent on peace. Incidentally, they are defending and upholding the interests ol' the I’nileJ States as well as their own. Moreover. if Hie I niled States had linked itself in. positive and practical co-operation with nations not less desirous than itself of upholding the principles ol peace on which Hie President dilated so eloquently, Hie present war need never have boon fought. A st raighl forward acknowledgment of these truths would have given to Mr Roosevelt s PanAmerican address qualities of substance and force which, m its actual compass, it definitely lacked.