A WORLD CONSTABULARY [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I
hope it is not yet too late to comment on Sir Hesketh Bell's plan for a world constabulary, published in your issue of December 29th.
His proposal is put forward with such restraint, and the picture which he paints has such attractive colours, that I can honestly say : " I wish I could believe it ! " - And yet I cannot do so. Total disarmament in advance of " moral disarmament " would be highly dangerous. After all, arma- ment means discipline ; as long as hatred and malice can exist on either side of a frontier, so we might fear above all things fighting arising out of inflamed passions and being carried on by undisciplined hordes with extemporized weapons. That would be to revert to savagery : civilization has made us outgrow that terror at least.
Sir Hesketh Bell complains that the League's force must be at its Unquestioned and immediate disposal, just as the Foreikir Legion can intervene at a word in tribal quarrels. But what a terrible conception it is to scale up several hundred- fold. True, the League is to sit as a " jury," and give a " verdict "—a verdict may take months to arrive at—but ultimately the terrible responsibility of unloosing an over- whelming Power is to fall on " Three' Just Men."
For it is a terrible power to wield. The trouble about all these analogies with constabulary or police is that they are entirely inaccurate_.: this is no question of police but of war, and war in its most terrifying and drastic form. Police are essentially a body who intervene with a minimum of force to keep the peace or enforce the law in advance of the trial. They act instantaneously and on their own initiative, and they are justified or not in subsequent judicial proceedings.
But these so-called International Police cannot act until the case has been heard, a verdict arrived at, and judgement been passed ; and then they are to act with, perhaps, the most potent and terrible of weapons—air power. That is the truth, and that is why these attractive lOoking schemes fail.
19 Berkeley Street, Lond4M, W.11,
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