Welsh Journals

PEACE AN IDEAL OR A RESPITE ? OR my people peace means the happi- ness of calm, the complete liberation JL from suffering. I failed to find this con- ception of it when I came first to Europe. At my English school I heard 'Pax' cried during a pillow fight, and understood it to mean a cessation of hostilities. In my Roman History lessons I learned that the 'Pax Romana' was the prohibi- tion of fighting. At Oxford I read Medieval His- tory and understood that the Peace of the Church, the truce of God, was merely the suspension of fighting. I studied international law and I found that, according to the Hague Convention, at most, Peace meant the prevention of war. Only at Versailles enshrined in the Covenant of the League of Nations did I find the noble conception of Peace as a positive state of friendship and un- derstanding." In these words, the first spoken by a delegate of his country in ten years of patient attendance at the Assemblies of the League, the Prince of Siam moved his hearers from fifty nations to a deep and genuine sympathy, refreshing in a gath- ering where congratulation and cordiality are too frequently expended with too little restraint. It was the more welcome to an observer if not to his own colleagues because it aptly and exactly des- cribes the background of the battle which is now going on in Geneva, under all the accepted forms of diplomacy, for the soul of the League. A year ago* the issues in front of the new Eng- lish Government were plain enough. They could sign the Optional Clause, settle Reparations, and evacuate the Rhineland. All these they faith- fully dealt with and into the bargain initiated negotiations for a Tariff Truce. Few such ad- vances are open to them in 1930. They can ac- cept the amendments to the Covenant, designed to square it with the Kellogg Pact, they can ac- cede to the General Act of Arbitration, they can sign the Treaty of Financial Assistance. None of these go so directly towards establishing peace in Eurooe as those obvious acts of justice a year ago. Nor, indeed, can the Government take these steps so unconditionally. In the year the results of their initiative in 1929 have yielded poor returns. Mr. Henderson has made it plain this time that England would accept no new money commitments until the States of the League have carried out their twelve-year-old pledges to dis- arm. As for the General Act, the Dominions must be consulted on that. More vigorously than ever, and with the limited success of the Naval Conference behind them, the English Government have pressed for Disarmament. In that they have been strengthened by the Germans and the other ex-enemy countries-Bulgaria, Hungary, by Frank Owen, M.P. and Austria-who are still helpless in the ring of their armed neighbours. Economic disarmament, permitting and sup- plementing the scrapping of the war machines, is the converging line of English policy. Mr. Gra- ham, disappointed with the failure of the Tariff Truce but firm in his stand against protectionist nationalism and hopeful still of freer trade among the nations, pushes a new policy of agreements upon specified classes of goods for exchange like textiles and machinery. And though in every land the staggering blow of the world trade slump strengthens the cry of the Nationalists, fearing the foreigner as workman as much as they fear him as soldier, the conviction of many of the League statesmen that tariffism would aggravate the malady, has gained for M. Briand's vague plan of United Europe many sympathisers, and for the more definite plan of an Agricultural Bloc ii. South-east Europe to stabilise and develop trade with the industrial west, an enthusiastic following. This is the brighter side of the League-per- haps the brightest, for their economic affinities have brought such political foes as Hungary and Roumania into conference. It may be that inter- est will' prove stronger than prejudices yet. It would be idle to blink at the other side of Geneva politics. The German elections are more than a symptom of a new and dangerous, trend in European affairs. They may accelerate that peril- ous movement towards nationalism which the trade depression has fitted with a new motive power. When 13,000,000 citizens can be got to vote for either one of two revolutionary parties pledged to overthrow the state by violence and when 7,000,000 of them will subscribe to a pro- gramme of Debt and Treaty repudiation, con- scription, industrial and military, economic self- sufficiency and racial and religious persecution, then liberal statesmen in Geneva must be filled with fear lest this new "Black" Terror should seize power in the central state of Europe. The League could hardly carry two Italys-and those conflicting. The policy of the English Government in the tariff and trade question and in the problem of disarmament is consistently expressed in their attitude towards the latest rift over the personnel of the League Secretariat. Shall the Civil Service of the World be made up of representatives-in the exact reflection of their country's power-of all its member States? Or shall it take its ser- vants from where it will, choosing them as nearly as human frailty will allow, upon merit, and re- quiring them to be truly international in their out- look and conduct? It depends if you see the