OCR Text |
Show THAT COMING CONFERENCE. One of the favorite expressions if the pacifists and internationalists is that the fate of the world and hu-j nianity hangs on the next Geneva dis-1 armament conference. If this is true, then the world is truly in a bad fix and civilization can be expected to vanish next year. For, as desirable as international limitation of armament arma-ment by agreement might be, there is every evidence at hand now that the Geneva conference will be a failure, fail-ure, if it is held at alL The present crisis in Manchuria has definitely demonstrated this. The action of the Japanese in going into lllur.inuria and the impotency of the League and the Kellogg pact have led to grave suspicion on every hand of the value of broad international committments. com-mittments. Having seen what has happened in Manchuria and how Japan Ja-pan has been able to flout the various var-ious powerful nations of the world, the average European nation which has any armament is going to be a 1 .t tie slow about giving it up. If tha League and international agreements of various sorts cannot be depended on to keep the peace, just what can be depended on in this time of mutual distrust and suspicion? The fact is that so long as there is a will to war anywhere in the world there is danger of war. A disarmament disarma-ment agreement will not prevent this. The thing needed is a fundamental change in human psychology. It is not to be forgotten that there were wars in the days before armored ships and guns were invented. Sink every gunboat in the world if you want to, but if trouble arises, merchant mer-chant ships can be quickly armed and can kill just as many people as ironclads. iron-clads. And it is to be remembered that some of the bloodiest wars in the history of the world were internal struggles, not affected by international internation-al agreements at all. Civil -wars were common back in Rome and they have been exhausting in England and Germany Ger-many in days gone by. Our own civil war is a recent example, and a still more recent one is fonnd in the troubles trou-bles of China. This is not denying the desirability of limitation or armament by international inter-national agreement. If this can be equitably done, all well and good. But its principal beneficial effects will be economic and not pacific. To prevent vrs we will have to eliminate human ambition and human selfishness and greed. We doubt whether a conference in Geneva or any place else on earth can acvromplish this. But to assert, as many internationalists internation-alists are now doing, that "the fate of civilization" rests on the coming conference at Geneva, is unwise to say the lea,st. For it is now apparent that such a conference, if held, will not succeed of its real purpose and that civilization will have to struggle on the best way it can, solving each; problem as .it conges along. |