LORD BEAVERBROOK AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Your readers may be grateful to Lord Beaverbrook for his convincing demonstration of the hopeless futility of attempting to achieve security either by alliances or by the balance of power ; and they will certainly be amused at the naivete of his demolition of the League of Nations by the simple method of stating and restating -that it is demolished. Equally simple is his way of proving that the one safe policy for England is isolation—by the mere assertion that it is so. Assertion, however, is not proof, and Lord Beaverbrook offers none. If there is no League of Nations, who is to solve those two problems of vital urgency to the world : (1) free access to raw materials for all ; (2) outlet for surplus population of growing nations ? On the peaceful solving of those two problems the future of the world depends. The only Court which can possibly solve them is a (not necessarily the) League of Nations. Failing a solution, England which, as things are, controls more than its share of raw materials, and claims so disproportionately large a part of.the unoccupied spaces of the world, will fmd herself exposed to attack by a combination of all the nations needing either access to raw materials or an outlet for surplus population. She must then pay the price of isolation, and it will have cost her dear.
There is a further reflection which arises from Lord Beaverbrook's article. The Spectator does, I think, a real service when it opens its columns to writers whose views differ widely from its own. But this implies an obligation of decency on those who enjoy The Spectator's hospitality.' They are granted the right to state their own views ; but not to misstate facts. To say that the League was a " con- cealed alliance " " for the purpose of keeping Germany nailed down to the Versailles settlement," is simply not true ; nor is it true that " as soon as the League was used for .a purpose other than the coercion of Germany, it collapsed." Readers of the Daily Express are used to this sort of thing, and probably attach little value to it. But gross perversions of the truth in an article honoured by admission to The Spectator are a grave abuse of its hospitality, which I venture to think has roused a keen sense of indignation in many of your readers. Of the taste of the unctuous quotation from a well-known hymn with which—somewhat irrelevantly—Lord Beaverbrook concludes it is perhaps best to say nothing.—
Yours faithfully, LIONEL JAMES. Moyses, Five Ashes, Sussex.
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