NEWS OF THE WEEK
NOTHING definite could have come of the debate initiated by Lord Davies in the House of Lords on Wednesday regarding an international police force, but all such discussions have a certain value. If the world is to evolve peacefully at all—and we have not yet been compelled " finally to abandon that hope—a new attitude towards the use of armed force must be inculcated. Force cannot within any future at present visible be eliminated from the world, but to maintain it as an instrument of impartial equity, not to further the interests of individual nations, is the logical and obvious line of advance. The League of Nations represents, in theory at any rate, an agreement that nations shall if necessary contribute from their national force to support the general will against some individual nation's will, and it is no great step from that to form some small nucleus of international force for service in a sudden emergency. Lord Cecil's idea of an international air force for use in supervising the execution of the air clauses of a disarmament convention is by no means chimerical. France has worked out quite clear-cut plans for an inter- national air force. But long argument and discussion must precede any definite steps in this direction and it is from that point of view that such a motion as Lord Davies' has its value.
