Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10, 1943. PREVENTING ANOTHER WAR.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 March 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10, 1943. PREVENTING ANOTHER WAR.

JN itself some of the talk that is going on at present in the United States on the subject of the occupation and use by that country after the war of bases in various parts of the Pacific is, or might be supposed to be, rather overbearing and foolish. The underlying theme, for example, of some observations by the chairman of the naval affairs sub-committee of the United States House of Representatives, Mr Magnusson, was summed up in his own statement that: — The Pacific will be our post-war responsibility. Some people say that the programme (for the acquisition of bases) smacks of Yankee imperialism, but that is not true. The United States wants only to assure peaceful Pacific islands, and we must obtain the tools that are necessary to carry out this responsibility. Apart from the countries of the British Commonwealth of Nations, there are a number of other nations amongst them China, Russia and the Netherlands, with their great East Indian possessions at present overrun by the Japanese, which. feel that they will have no subservient part to play in maintaining peace in. the Pacific once it has been re-established. It may be hoped, however, that all of them will be ready and willing to co-operate with the United States in establishing and maintaining a reign of law in the Pacific and in other parts of the world. It would be easy, but unwise to reply to talk like that of Mr Magnusson and some others in a spirit of defiant nationalism. Assuredly it will not devolve even upon a nation as great- and powerful as the United States to become the sole guardian and custodian of future peace in the Pacific or elsewhere. As many of the greatest of contemporary American leaders have freely recognised and affirmed, the hope of the future is in interna-’ tional agreement and co-operation. The principal effect of utterances by other less enlightened Americans utterances in themselves rather irritating and objectionable—should be to quicken a desire for the opening without delay of practical discussion of the condition in which peace-loving nations may co-operate to establish world order. The United States Vice-President, Mr Henry Wallace, has said that: “A third world war appears inevitable unless the Western democracies and Russia reach a satisfactory understanding before the present conflict ends.” If the counsel here implied is acted upon, an end should soon be made of a narrowly nationalistic approach by some sections in the, United States, or in other countries, to the problem of establishing peace and order in the world of tomorrow. We of the British Commonwealth of Nations are entitled to resent domineering talk by people of any other nation and to applaud the declaration made not long ago by Mr Churchill that we mean to hold our own and that he had not become the King’s first Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. But it needs to be recognised also that, for both great and small nations, international co-operation to establish peace and prevent future war is bound to entail some abatement of sovereignty, or rather some merging of sovereignty in an international authority. If international co-operation in the establishment of world peace and order is achieved, the liberties of the participating nations will not be infringed, but will be broadened and enlarged, and questions of access to and control over strategic bases, and many other questions besides, will be settled without difficulty. The immediate question, as Mr Wallace has suggested, is whether the principal United Nations are to give the lead which will make this achievement possible. Necessary as that lead is, it should go without saying that the agreement sought is one in which it will be open to all nations able and willing to do so to participate.