Mr. Churchill on the League Mr. Winston Churchill's broadcast on
war last Friday was a strange mixture of belligerence and pacifism. He insists that Great Britain must proceed instantly to provide itself with the strongest air force in Europe and declares in the same breath his faith in the power of the collective system, represented by the League of Nations, to save the Continent from war for the next ten years and so give an interval in which a structure of enduring peace may be built up. He conceives the League at the moment as • designed mainly for the protection of snail] States against Germany, and advocates the ad hoc enrolment of a volunteer League force when a serious danger from this or some other quarter threatens. In the assumption that a League force, if it were required, could easily be recruited on a voluntary basis Mr. Churchill is no doubt right, but without at any rate the skeleton of a permanent organ- ization it would certainly not be ready in time for the emergency, nor 'competent to cope with it. Bat the- essence of the broadcast was the demand that we should construct the strongest European air force—which would be perfectly simple provided the rest of the States of Europe were prepared to sit still and watch us do it. If it occurred to any of them to want to have the largest air force too a desperate and provocative competition would be inevitable, with everyone's sense of insecurity growing all the time. Is that really so much more states- manlike a plan than the abolition of military and naval aviation and the control of civil ?
