The 'Peace' Conference

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 31, Issue 44, 31 October 1907, Page 9

The 'Peace' Conference

After having confirmed or revised the rules of the game of war, from slitting a weazand to sinking a warship, the ' Peace ' Conference has closed its sittings and dispersed. And the peace of the world seems, all % things considered, to be in about as parlous a state as it was before tfiese International War x alavers started hum-hum-bumiEing to the sleepy canals and the shady lime-trees of the Hague. A mild and tentative suggestion by Sir Edward Fry, tending towards the reduction of the vast armaments of the fighting nations,was interesting by reason of the glimpse that it gave of the enormous expenditure of some of the Great Powers upon preparations to safeguard themselves against attack or to ' get their blow in fust '. bummarising his figures, an English contemporary says :— *In 1898, the year immediately preceding the first Hague Conference,- the" total expenditure -on warlike armairents in Europe, the United States, "and Japan was above £251,000,000, and last year it amounted to no -less than £3^20,000,(TOO. In the interval between the. two Conferences wie annual military expenditure . has increased by £89,000,000. " Such", said Sir Edward, "is the Christian peace of the civilised -world in tne twentieth century I " He mignu have'added : "xi between the first and the present .Conference there has been an increased expenditure of eighty-nine millions, what will be the increase by the time the next conference assembles ? " We are pre.uy certain tnat some such thought must have been, running in the minds of the delegates, however paeiucally inclineu. we are eqjaally convinced, that they were all of the opinion that, if armaments arc to be reduced, the process will scarcely be accomplished by the mild Briti^ proposal that there should be an interchange of information between the Powers respecting their programmes of construction for^ new vessels of war. me speech gave information and pleasure to those who heard it, but beyond-that its value did-not extend.' The diplomatists who assembled at the -Hague to discuss war were probably actuated by a love of uni- ■ versal peace. But international jealousy -and distrust

are likely, for full many a day, to receive proposals for. a real limitation of armaments with about as ju«i>ie seriousness as the Duke of Marrobrough or the First Napoleon could have bestowed upon Bobadil's- device of saving the expense of a, standing army by enrolling as the nation's champions twenty trained figjiters 'of a good spirit and able constitution '.