4 APRIL 1931, Page 16

PEACE THROUGH JUSTICE [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sit,-

—Your review of my new book Can War Bc Averted ? is so very kind that I hope you will not think me ungrateful if I ask permission to refer to a term in it which seems to Inc to do less than justice to one of my main arguments.

Apart from the grave issues which attach to the revision of the world's existing political boundaries, I urge strongly that the conqueror nations who hold the best part of the world in fee cannot expect great and gifted peoples to remain content within poor and narrow areas, and that such an ill-distribution of opportunity amounts to a condition of persistent economic war by the conqueror nations which is as real, as cruel and as death-dealing as occasional war made with arms. Your reviewer says that I suggest that if the Conqueror-Pacifists really want peace they must " buy it by inventing some means of allowing free access to the world's territory and resources to the large and rapidly increasing populations which arc cut off from them." I take some objection to the word " buy," for justice cannot be bought. The appeal is to the reason and conscience of mankind to do justice, and thereby to secure peace through contentment. I suggest also that the Conqueror- Pacifists themselves stand to gain by the full development of a world which, as things are, is necessarily in large part neglected

[Our reviewer writes : " I did not say that justice could be bought, but that peace can with sacrifices on the part of the present dominant world powers, in other words, with justice. For the rest, lack of space only prevented Inc from describing the benefits of Sir Leo Money's policy."—En. Spectator.]