A new White Paper explains what it all signified, when,
amid acclamation, the Government announced at Geneva that Great Britain would sign the Optional Clause of the Hague Statutes. This very praiseworthy attempt to ensure. an informed public opinion has once more started the hare of the " freedom of action of the British Navy." Professor A. Pearce Higgins, writing in the Times on December 20th, reminds us that hitherto, as in Mr. Henderson's speech at Geneva in 1924, His Majesty's Government has always made an appropriate reservation in this matter to our obligations under the Covenant. He points out that the Peace Pact in itself is not enough to account for the dropping of this reserva- tion in relation to the Optional Clause, and supports General Smuts' demand for a " supplementary general convention " such as would carry the principles of the Peace Pact to their logical conclusions. No one in this country, still less on the Continent, imagines that the institution of war will be eliminated from political relations by any solemn proclamation of Governments in council. In other words, the urgent task is to devise, in place of war, machinery for the pacific settlement of international disputes. The signing of the Optional Clause is, in this direction, the beginning of . wisdom, though it does not, of course, touch disputes that can be classed in the political category.
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