INTERNATIONAL FORCE
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.T SIR,—Air-Commodore Chamier professes to have discovereA that Admiral Lawson belongs to the right wing and I to the left. I believe the Admiral and myself to be in-complete agree- ment, but let that pass.
. The Air-Commodore talks about " lightly " armed police, and is obviously under the delusion that police become soldiers or rice .versa, according to whether they are lightly or heavily armed. The police are a force used to keep the law, military forces are used under the duelling system because no law exists. Military forces would remain such if only armed with truncheons, police in lawless plaCes use armoured cars, machine guns, &c., but remain police.
As to the difficulty of defining an aggressor and acting against him swiftly, this would be a comparatively simple matter in a Europe controlled by an International Police Force, because ,national military and. air forces would have become, ipso facto, illegal. Thus their very existence would justify action against them, making proof of attack or violation of frontiers unnecessary.
Incidentally, the League did not take seventeen months to discover whether China or Japan was the aggressor, it took that time to shelve the problem and save its face because it was•not strong enough to act I
It seems that the Air-Commodore has become more pacifist than the pacifists in his search for arguments for the-retention' of national armaments. He suggests unarmed police for the League. These unfortunate stalwarts are to patrol the fron- tiers of potentially, and often imminently, hostile countries armed to the teeth and admitting no international law to regulate their-behaviour. Defenceless, they are to-run along disputed frontiers like referees at a rowdy football match. Perhaps they would be allowed whistles if my lords Rother- mere and Beaverbrook would allow such extravagant expendil ture by the League.—! am, Sir, Ate.,
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