Oct, 3.
Col, Frank Knox, U.S, Secretary of Navy, in @ speech at Indianapolis, has outlined the heavy' burden which will rest upon the boulders of the Anglo-Saxon democracies, when victory over Hitler and his satellites shall have restored peace to the world, He put it quite bluntly when he said that the British Empire and the United States would have to combine to stop aggression, which might lead to a world disturbance, at its beginnings, that they should join forces for 'a century at least to produce "by force, it need be," an effective system of international Jaw. It is of little avail to recount the grave istokes which have been made internation ally during the last ten years, but it may said with justice that, if such a combination had' existed. rather more than ten years ago, and if' action, which Col, Knox contemplates as probably being necessary to ensure the peace of the future, had deen taken, aggression as it is now known would probably not have proved so fashionable, The rule of law has again to be restored to the world. Not only that, it will have to be vindicated, whenever necessary, by firm action on the part of those countries paying more than lip-service to its principles. Nations which violate their undertakings will have to be made to conform to the law; aggressors will have to be restrained even though it means resort, to force. Apart from what happened in the Far East, it is clear that failure to tak appropriate action, directly Hitler commenced breaking the terms of the Versailles Treaty, only encouraged him to proceed with the plan which has brought Europe into this catastrophic war. Had it been made plain to him from the very outset that he would be made to full Germany's commitments under the Treaty, a very different state of affairs would have been brought about, and Germany, instend of being impoverished in a war which can only load to her destruction, might very well have become by now one of the most, if not the most prosperous country on the Continent, 'There will undoubtedly be those to whom the idea of a universal Anglo-American hegemony, even if only for the maintenance of a permanent peace, will prove repugnant, But it is not going to' be a question of what possible aggressors of the future may think, but of what is best for the world at large, and how the sacred principles of democracy can best be defended. The very Toast that can be said for such an arrangement is that fat any tate it would create a. benevolent hegemony, rather than the tyrannies which the Nazis'and Fascists so obviously contem~ plate. "Such a combination as that which Col. Knox envisages would be the most powerful'in the world. Tt-would seck no territory fal aggrandisement at the expense of others, and would permit of no othe? nation, or nations attempting to do the same thing. Much has been written in the past of the resurrection of the League of Nations in some form or other, backed up by an international police force, That does not seem fo be at all feasible if judged by the history of the League, and Col. Knox's alter= ative is the only one which commends There is something to be said for the be-Met that if "the whole world would enjoy for a century the blessings of peace, if during that period those peoples, who worship
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.