This book is the expansion of! notes used by seat rman aap ort ewe Has igor fa inf opt dates wear, everybody pursues policies hich "in "the. end-coat mean wary evause they do not ace the relation Between the policy and its results fast ar no one wanted: to" paralyse Esopear'reietienent 9 prevent the tataally. exclusive demands fu. the matter "of" Reparstionsor' cow of Bevis. But our understanding Society is 20. Sefective that we simply out tee that our demands Tutually exclusive and must proton pes The subject of his discourse ly before the world tothe most earnest exhortation to read and study what the author says naturally follows after perusal of his clearly logical examination of the situation. He plunges into the controversy over the possible abolition of war, and therein he really means the destruction of aggressive nationalism, by taking as his analogy the attitude of the Western man towards public health problems. The arguments against the principles which. the League of Nations was formed to. establish include" the contention that human nature cannet be changed, that war has its biological roots in the struggle for bread, that it is necessary to change the status quo, that it Is productive of many fine' qualities and is inevit, able. Applying the analogy of public health, the author points out that the same arguments were used in deprecation of public healt' organisation. Yet plague, cholera) and leprosy have been wiped away. inthe West. Experts disagree on sanitation just as experts disagree on economies, and the public. do not see the economic proof as they do see the medical proof, because it' abandons that understanding as soon as it comes to. face economic: and, therefore, social and political Phenomena. The point is that in 1919 experts were telling Euro} that the idea of Reparations w: thoroughly unsound unless ised that Germany could only goods. Any candidate for lament who attempted to present that point "of view to th British electors was incontinently howled down; yet to-day it is gen rally accepted as the self-evide principle which ought. to have in-fo jed government action. In the way, America's experts are telling the government that payment of the American Debt, coincident with: high tacit, "walls, Sheer folly and definitely harmful to America, Yet the candidates for the recent Presidential Election had practically to commit themselves to the principle that the Economic Conference should not discuss the question of War Debts.
The author points out the am ing inconsistency of the attacks on the League of Nations. A few years ago the Rothermere press way saying "Hats off to France" in acclaiming her entry into the Rube an_admitted mistake. To-day the Rothermere press is attacking the League of Nations on the ground that it is the tool of French militarism. These are the instructors of the modern democracy. The same press monopolies, or would monopolise, the virtue of respect to the throne. And yet. when Lord Beaverbrook develops his fatuous Empire Crusade fantasy and declares that it does not matter how much foreign trade Great Britain loses because there is always the Empire, there is just as applause for him as for the Prince Wales when his Royal Highness ints out the close interlocking of commerce and finance in creating the interdependence of nations. The Prince of Wale atally a recent public dinner in London, put to those who disbelieve in the League of Nations this pertinent question:
If they mistrust the League, what possible alternative have they"
Offer for establishing peace and ree Building prosperity it Norman's castigation of the popular press is well deserved:
At present these papers are busy rampaging against the League Nations, deriding it, sneering at it, eek after eck upon the same relation to -our national vin "fact, bears precise crown a year Ing'am income of £300. They propose mne substitute for the League, "nor present any reasoned argument agme the probability that if we drift ineck to isdlationiam and international anarchy, those conditions will, pro~ Gace in' the fature whet they ave always produced in the past. They o'er Pant war, they "Just, don't want the old ways sanged, oF the ganized Situations rooted an. institu bot great changes irrational life can deal with it. And so.we come to a situation which, "while "everybody With that most thinking men and women will agree Lady Rhondda has recently pointed out, with considerable perception, that the popular pres "is really' only what' the populace makes it. And she asserts that more outrageous things are said in the seclusion of the house party and the country house than ever are printed by the "Daily Mail" or the "Daily Ex. press" in' flagrant' recantation of The very. maxims. and. axioms by which they. previously justified their' position as public mentors, There is arly" a problem in the British Empire today the treatment of which is not vitiated. by what one might call the dinner table philosophy which eases out of ten is the frank, tacit, admission of a complete ability to bink. It is" this fluence at work which hampers world. statesmen, It is all the more insidious because che popular press tics to play up to itvand is in that effort by a curious mixture of ultra-nationalism and snobbery. If only for this reason this book ig to be firmly recom: mended ax bringing the breath of fresh sanity into the general survey of the present difficulties before the nations.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.