The Prime Min ister's Opportunity T HE visit of the French Prime
Minister to London is of good omen. If he has come, as is understood, on the invitation of Mr. MacDonald the invitation was well advised. The two men are old friends. They have worked_ together in the past at Geneva and in London. Their outlook on international affairs is similar, when allowance is made for the , special . mentality , which characterizes every Frenchman in regard to such questions as disarmament and security, Their personal inter- change of views on those problems is to be welcomed partly because there is at least a reasonable prospect of its leading to tangible results, and still more because it suggests that Mr. MacDonald may be preparing at last to take the initiative without which the deadlock in which the Disarmament Conference finds itself to-day will never be resolved. Whether lie should have acted sooner than he has done need not be discussed here. There is a tide in the affairs of nations which must no more be taken before the flood than after it. The Prime Minister may have calculated aright and taken the flood precisely at the turn. At all events his personal intervention had become essential, and now that he has intervened decisions calling for political courage no less than political sagacity may be demanded of him.
The world, most palpably, is perishing for lack of leadership. In the three great problems demanding solution in the international .field, disarmament, the Far Eastern crisis and the economic situation, the one prevailing characteristic has been drift. Events have been mastering men instead of men events.. In the domestic affairs of different countries one or two politicians, a Mussolini, a Hindenburg, have kept their grip on the situation immediately, about them. In international pOlities _ there is no single statesman of the first rank- of whom it can be said that he has set his ideals before him and is calling to the world to realize them. Everywhere the impression is created that the spokesmen of the nations sec the goal and - recognize. it, and avert their eyes, because the path to its attainment promises to be hard.. At Lausanne the Prime Minister of this country exercised• leadership and the Conference achieved success. At Geneva. Great Britain has acted neither as brake nor as accelerator, Her position has been indeterminate and no one knew what she could be counted on to do or say tomorrow. The time has come to make an end of that, and only the Prime Minis. ter can end it. He has to take the situation as he finds it. His own disposition may have been to deal with the. economic problem first and the disarmament problem second. But events have not fallen out so, and the disarma- ment deadlock is poisoning the whole international atmo-. sphere. The surgeon must turn where the need for his skill is immediate. . . .
The issue is plain and undisguisablc. The Gertnati delegates left the Disarmament Conference and will not return till their country's claim for equality of status is recognized. That demand is just. It will have to be; conceded. Everyone knows the- concession will be. exacted by' Germany illegally unless 'the pledges givens her 'thirteen years; ago are honoured. Geintany- will rearm if her former foes will not disarm, and the result will be a new armainents race as incompatible" with economy as with peace. Arguinents are being bandied to show that this country has reduced her armaments by so lunch since tbe War. We have reduced—con- siderably. But all that is irrelevant. Not • the ' Navy- League itself Will pretend that our forces td-day are at: such 'a 'level, or anywhere 'approaehing it, as enables. us fd Ittrn to *Germany and say that we at 'least -have' fulfilled the moral obligations we contracted in 1919k The question to-day -is -whether we are to "say that; with the other nations concerned, we must and will fulfil them. It is useless, and worse, to make a grudging recognition of the justice of Germany's claim in the juridical dialectics of the Foreign Office's recent state- ment. What is necessary now is to create an . atnio. sphere, and it is hard to name any single man except the Prime Minister of Great Britain who could create it.
Germany demands recognition of the equality of status- principle. The Prime Minister cannot refuse it, with the texts of the declarations of 1919 before his eyes; Let him, after his talk with M. Herriot—and in the last resort regardless of the results of that talk—proclaim that for his part he accepts the claim without prevarica- tion or reserve, and will set himself, at Geneva or any- where, to work out the implications of that admission along lines that will give Germany guarantees ,of the good faith of her former enemies, and at the same time take account of the exigencies of the existing. situation. Germany- has never demanded reduction in a day. But she has made it perfectly clear that the one alternative to rearmament on her part . is a definite and binding agreement by other nations to .disarm. The mistake so far has been in discussing how to apply the principle before admitting it, and the only result has been to create an atmosphere of suspicion instead of an atmo- sphere of confidence. At the cost, it may be, of alienating a few of his supporters, at the cost possibly_ of. one or two resignations from his Cabinet, Mr. MacDonald has it in his power to-day, by committing himself openly and _irre-. vocably to a principle which, the mass of men and women of all parties in this country have accepted, to change the face of international politics.
Disarmament, it is true, is not the only . problem racking the minds of statesmen. In a week or two decisions just as difficult and just as critical will have to be taken regarding the Far East. There the way has been enormously smoothed by the issue of the. Lytton Report. To act on the Commission's recommenda- tions may range Japan against us, but it will range us closer to the United States than we have been for years, and on an issue involving no mere question of expediency but the whole fabric of world-order and world-organiza- tion that may well be regarded as the one supreme benefit conferred on mankind by four years of carnage. To take a firm line may raise difficulties, but all the difficulties so far have come of declining to take a firm line. Let it be hoped that the necessity for that will not arise. But let there at all costs be no paltering with the temptation to ignore the evidence and give a tainted verdict beeause to follow the straight and honest course may mean antagoniz- ing a powerful State.. To condone the use of force to effect political changes is to encourage its use for. like purposes in other continents than Asia. It is to proclaim to countries like France that her own army and nothing else can bring her security, since the community of nations refuses to vindicate the principles it-proclaimed after. the War: It is, consequently, to banish all hope of disarmament to the realm of dreams. The way can and should be made easy for Japan within the limits- set by the treaties which she, like this and other countries, has signed: But there can be no -acquiescence in a defiance-of those treaties. The Prime-Minister has no easy deciSions to make. But the moment is upon us when the leadership of this 'country, exercised in his person, might turn the world from the way of destruction to the way of salvation.
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