Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-09-01
Understanding First Aim
OF Premier MacDOnald's Peace Program

dinner tables and in the salons of the
great in every capital-Paris, London,
Berlin, Prague. Budapest. Moscow,
Rome, Vienna--diScussions as to when
this next war will come and which ma
tons will be involved. The Kellogg
pact has not appreciably modified this
mood, this peSSimiStic and almost ia
talistic outlook, which has been strength
ened by the failure of every conference
so far to achieve any real success in
the disarmament sphere. But Mac
Donald thinks that an Anglo-American
naval agreement will inaugurate q new
and better mood.
He has no illusions, however. about
the magnitude of this disarmament
task. Although sea forces are most
vulnerable to attack by the armament
primers, the resistance they show in
the Mediterranean looks capable of
bunting the sharpest tools an Anglo
American understanding can apply.
France Adops Cautious Policy.
France, conscious that her military
strength henceforth depends largely
upon her ability to draw without re-
striction upon her North African res
ervoirs is intent upon making her lines
of communication with her African
territories secure. Italy, largely de-
pendent upon imports from overseas.
has been building to make impregnable
certain sea routes vital to her in time
of war.
Then there is Germany's mysterious
new navy, which in 1927 was $55,000.-
600 item in her budget (only $5,000,000
under the French naval appropriation.
In four years she has built or author
lied 10 new vessels, at an aggregate
cost of more than $90000,000
But what makes naval experts look
significantly at one another and dis
armament advocates tear their hair. is
the peculiar fact that the cost of the
estimate for one l0,000-ton cruiser be-
ing $20,000,00O or two-thirds the cost
of British battleship of 41.00O tons,
and every other new ship is in proper
ton. France asks what is really being
done with all this money-and why the
personnel establishment consists of one
officer to every two men and why the
Germans need II flag officers and lat
captains and commanders on the active
list for 40 vessels. all told.
With this mystery of the Baltic, and
Italy building new war craft of enor-
nous velocity and unprecedented gun
power as fast as her yards can turn
them out. it Is not surprising to find
France proceeding with huge building
program which will add ia new units
to her fleet by 1882. and give her fleet
of 175,000 tons of line ships. 10000 tons
of plane carriers, 100000 tons of light
cruisers and $4,000 tons of submarines
or Britain as much preoccupied with
the security of her lines of communica-
ton in that inland sea as she is by the
enigmatic situation in the remote Pa
cif1c, the focus Of Americas naval
thinking and plans.
The naval experts present Macdonald
with these complicating factors and
leave him to it. He is now worrying
away at the problem, which is as large
as the planet. If he had only America,
and the Atlantic and Pacific to con-
with Dawes, instead of. at this time of
writing, still being engaged In them.
There is much hope in the fact that
he is a Scot. Stanley Baldwin would
not have got on so well with Dawes,
and could not be depended upon to
get on so we'll with Hoover. For he is
as English as his cousin, Rudyard Kip
ling. and that means much.
The English provide the unchanging
inSular character in the blend which
makes up the British race. They are
neither clever, nor flexible. nor disposed
to put themselves in the shoes of some
one else-which Macdonald thinks is
the ability most needed in the pursuit
of peace today. When they need these
qualities in their business, their finance,
their politics or their statecraft, they
import a man of another tribe.
One finds them sending to America
in time of crisis the philosophical
Scottish Earl Balfour, and to America
and then to India the judicial Jewish
Earl of'Reading. When the war seems
not to be going well they get rid of the
slow English Asquith and put in the |
un-English, excitable and emotional |
Welsh Lloyd George-just as in the day |
when the backbone Conservative party |
looked like it was going to pieces, and |
the empire along with it. the English |
country squires and aristocrats made |
the fantastic Jew Disraeli their leader |
and premier and let him run country |
and empire for them.
MacDonald's Scottish traits of de-
tachment and conciliatorinesS are going |
to count for as much in the forthcom-
ing disarmament parleys as Hoover's
civilian and Quaker dislike of militia
rism and navalism, and Dawes trench
ant common-senSe and intimate
Of that complicated human
being, the European.