The League

of Nations

The Real Problem

of Disarmament

WE have seen that despite President Hoover's welcome initiative the efforts of the Preparatory Commission at Geneva have split on the old old rock of conscription. To the Germans, who by the Treaty settlement have been effectively disarmed and are forbidden to restore compulsory military service, the refusal of France and other war-victors to abandon the 'system themselves can only appear in the light of a deter- Mination to maintain their military hegemony. To most people—Germans, Dutch, Scandinavians, Americans no less than ourselves—the, spectacle of the whole male population of a country being trained for war (cf. M. Painleve's measure for organizing the French nation for military defence) spells :finis to disarmament in Europe. If there were no hope of better things, we should say that it spells also the suicide of France, since a national policy conceived in terms of " war potential " —to use the language of the experts—must mean ultimately the triumph of the big battalions, Germany and Italy.

In the latest and best book on the subject, Disarmament, by S. de Madariaga (Oxford University Press, 15s.), it is made abundantly clear that this question of differences in mili- tary tradition is only a secondary factor in a tremendous problem which demands far more heart-searching than most of us give to it. No one who prides himself on common sense will dispute the contention' here established that the Direct or Technical method of disarmament—in isolationinust lead, as it has done now, to a blind alley. Nor is this con- clusion weakened by the fact that, as at the Washington Con- ference, Great Britain and America, the two most important sea Powers, have apparently decided once again to refrain from doing a very foolish thing, i.e., starting a senseless arma- ments race. As Professor Madariaga says pertinently :- " The world has become so modest that abstention from folly Is nowadays trumpeted forth as wisdom . . . Can it be said in all honesty that the Washington Conference was as rich in true international wealth as it was in five national savings ? "

In other words, separate understandings do not touch more than the fringe of the real problem of disarmament, and the most hopeful sign at present—pace Sir Austen Chamberlain —is that the United States Government deliberately declared its intention of working through the Commission at Geneva, and not simply as if it were an Anglo-American affair.

" SOLDIERS IN Murri."

Professor Madariaga, as Director of the Disarmament Section of the League of Nations Secretariat for many years, has had a unique opportunity of witnessing at first-hand the antics " of the several nations which vie with one another in their eagerness to disarm without loss of military power." Besides providing his usual amount of entertainment he has performed a real service in restoring our perspective, in dis- pelling, we may hope, a certain amount of prejudice by his demonstration that, so long as we bow down to the idol of the independent sovereign State, we are all—and not merely those nations that cleave to the idea of military service as one of the duties of the citizen—" soldiers in mufti."

" What we call wars are but fits of hostilities in a disease which is the real war, a state of open rivalry, of jealousy, of grab, of fear of our neighbours' progress."

When we reviewed Professor Schneider's book on Fascism we could find no more appropriate term for that movement than Potenza—the religion of power. This book makes us understand that the new Italy exhibits only a pernicious and virulent form of an organic disease, which afflicts all civilized society, as we know it. Until international co-operation has replaced international anarchy, until we have discovered Methods of reducing the utility of armaments as instruments of policy—they are indeed, as Foreign Offices well know, more useful in time of peace than in time of war—there can be no peace. Until an international policy in terms of peace has replaced our national policies in terms of power, all Disarma- ment Conferences, however successful in appearance, are bound to degenerate into Armament Conferences.

" The world is one. It must be thought of as one, governed as one, kept in peace as one . . . We need not simply a world-com-

iunity which will forestall conflicts and solve them peacefully . . . ut which will regulate its life from A to Z on the prmciple that the World is one and that there is one common interest." THE OBSTACLES.

In the first part styled Critical " the obstacles are fairly and squarely faced ; first, those of a general character, such as the slow rhythm imposed on the forward march of the League by differences in national psychology, this being aggravated by the fact that national executives are themselves unstable :—

By its constitution the League is like an orchestra of fifty-five musicians which must seek perfect unison. When this has been secured after infinite patience, one or two of the musicians are with- draren and replaced by new artists with new instruments and new ideas about the tune to be played."

Then there are the difficulties inherent in the state of the world to-day, above all the fact that nations are manifestly at different stages in imperial evolution :-

" for some of. them, youthful and cynical, it (the idea of giving up armaments) sounds like a hypocritical appeal to stop gambling made in the name of virtue by a winning gambler when he has wiped out the green table with his lucky hands."

Worse still the tyranny of prestige, of keeping up appearances. It is too true that " the forms of our dead ideas still linger in our thought long after we have discarded the ideas themselves." Let Ili, in this country, take to heart one of the more obvious examplei of this (another being the American fossil of " no entanglements in Europe ").

`fEngland, as a whole, still believes in the supremacy of the British Navy as the panacea for all her international ills. That it bas been a panacea for about three centuries no one could deny. That it played its last scene in this magnificent role during the Great War no .one can deny. But that it was the last scene is apparent to everyone outside England and to those clear-sighted Englishmen who do not allow the glow of the past to interfere with the light of the present."

PEACE OR SOVEREIGNTY.

Part Two shows us the painful process by which the League has moved on—slowly indeed but distinctly—towards that goal, along the path marked out by the Covenant. " Dis- armament," it is clear, is a tendency prompted by two different lines of thought : arms cause wars ; wars cause arms. Hence the persistent wavering of the Powers between the direct or technical method, culminating in the fiasco of the Coolidge Conference,' and the indirect or political method of the Pro- tocol, the Locarno treaties and the Commission on Arbitration and Security. Finally, with the Kellogg Pact, " America showed the world a magnificent example of splendid isolation and power in terms of idealism." Both the latter and the Russian proposal for immediate disarmament, however

admirable in themselves, miss the point, which is that the problem of disarmament cannot be solved in isolation from the remaining problems of the world. There is only one way, and the French, although perhaps from nationalist motives, have rightly defined the objective as Forganisation de la paix. The outlawry of war doctrine is described here as a red herring drawn across the trail of disarmament and peace, CO because it proceeds from the assumption of unimpaired State sovereignty, (b) because, in its rejection of sanctions, it repudiates collective self-defence, the pooling of resources which is essential if we are ever to get out of the old rut of si via pacein para bellum. It becomes an efficient proposal as soon as it is completed by an adequate organization of the world-community.

The final section, containing some salutary home truths is in a measure an estimate of the tremendous responsibility which the peoples of Great Britain and America will bear for the next few years : the United States because, often with the highest motives, it is true, " she gives the world a lesson of unlimited and irresponsible sovereignty every day " ; Great Britain because the average supporter of the League tends still to look upon it simply as a death-bed doctor. Surely, it is said so often, especially by Conservatives, we must remain free to act in case of an emergency. These are the paramount obstacles which block the way to peace. Yet undoubtedly the number of those who have seen the light is growing, and we may hope that, what- ever Government comes into power next month, it will be ready to make the most of Great Britain's geographical and jrsychological position in assuming the leadership of the Movement of world construction. British statesmen more than any other bear the terrible responsibility for a future of