FOUNDATIONS OF PEACE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 73, 15 November 1940, Page 13

FOUNDATIONS OF PEACE

A LASTING PEAGE, By Maxwell Garnett (with some chapters on the basis of German. co-operation by H. F. Koeppler). Allen and Unwin. Dr. Garnett’s problem is not a new one, nor in principle is his solution. His book is, however, more and less than an attempt to solve a problem; it is a piece of propaganda. He seeks to persuade and he seeks to proselytise, but he is not a Dr. Goebbels. Nor does he want to stampede a bewildered public. He wrote this book because he believes that the first step towards an enduring peace is an informed and _ intelligent public opinion. Indeed, the task of building a world on a lasting order is for him as much a matter of education and psychology as of politics and economics. He was for 18 years Secretary to the League of Nations Union,’ and he is able to give a well-documented account of the framing of the League Covenant, its application for ten years, and its gradual collapse in the hands of politicians. Dr. Garnett’s plan for world reconstruction is naturally enough based on League principles, but he has adapted them to meet a changing world. With some of it, therefore, few will now agree, but it is impossible to deny the fundamental soundness of parts of it. The chapters by Dr. Koeppler are, however, the .most interesting section of the book. Dr. Koeppler is now a British subject, byt he was born and brought up in pre-Nazi Germany and can speak with some authority on the possibilities of German co-operation, He will not have it at all that Germans are "incurable addicts of militarism." The enemy, he still maintains, are the Junkers, a relatively small class of big landowners who "from the Middle Ages to the Great War were the only people who counted politically in Germany." These people were responsible for prolonging the: inflation, ruining the whole German middle class, and weakening the democratic Republic. And although Hitler has crushed them like all others, they still remain in industry, on the land, and in the army. Dr. Koeppler’s fear is that a war-worn Europe might be too ready to accept a Junkers Government after Hitler's downfall. If it does, peace is doomed. The only kind of Government with which we can co-operate would be, he says, "one whose first measures included a thorough land reform and a close supervision of the key industries,"