National Review Recent Contents JUNE 1927 Episodes of the Month By K. K. KAWAKAMI By the RIGHT REV. BISHOP KNOX, D.D. By PROFESSOR L. W. LYDE By LT.-GEN. SIR GEORGE MACMUNN, K.C.B. A Protest against Nationalization Mr. Spencer's Speech French Lawn Tennis AUGUST 1927 Episodes of the Month Jutland-Germany's Mistaken Policy By REAR-ADMIRAL HARPER The Plight of Agriculture By SIR HENRY PAGE CROFT, BART, M.P. By GERALD B. HURST, K.C., M.P. The 1820 Memorial Settlers' Association JULY 1927 Episodes of the Month Lists The Anglo-Russian Trade Agreement, 1921-27 By the RT. HON. L. S. AMERY, M.P. By HUGH E. M. STUTFIELD When Race-horses Try By MUCKRAKE May Days on the Fells By MISS FRANCES PITT Cecil Rhodes in Peace and War By GEORGE A. L. GREEN Lord George Murray and the " Forty-Five" By the RT. HON. SIR JOHN ROSS, BART. 66 Price 38. net. 'National Review" Office, 8 John Street, Adelphi, London, W.C.2 THE NATIONAL REVIEW No. 536. OCTOBER 1927 EPISODES OF THE MONTH If those who affect to believe in the League of Nations as an effective guarantee against another Great War are satisfied with its performances during the A Hotbed of Intrigue past month, we can only say that they are very easily pleased. To the rest of the world Geneva appears to be a hotbed of international intrigue, a centre of incoherence and confusion. The League can only make a show of unity so long as it does nothing. The moment it attempts any positive action in any serious sphere its members are at sixes and sevens and set to work manoeuvring for position, as it was always inevitable they would do. This is not through any individual idiosyncrasies in Council or Assembly, as thick-and-thin adherents of the Covenant would have us suppose, but is inherent in an institution which was created to attempt the impossible task of transforming mankind. Human nature being what it is, such a body as the League is unworkable. Were it otherwise the League would become unnecessary, as nations would be everything they should be and none would covet their neighbour's goods or suspect each other's intentions. In fact, there would be no nations to do any coveting, as the world would constitute one vast brotherhood of man in which everybody would adore everybody else. It might be somewhat dull but it should be peaceful. As it is, the world is anything but dull, though, unhappily, it is not peaceful, being overloaded with dynamite that is liable to explode at any moment. So far from preventing such explosions, these gatherings at Geneva seem more likely to promote them by providing a platform in the centre of Europe, where every international incident VOL. XC 11 of any moment is fought out by the parties concerned under the watchful and suspicious eyes of their respective communities. In old days, by secret covenants secretly negotiated, diplomacy could frequently effect an amicable settlement of difficult and even dangerous questions. But the diplomacy of debate can only serve to inflame issues that might have been privately disposed of. The fact that it is admittedly to the good that foreign statesmen should meet one another in the flesh and get to know each other by sight instead of through the mutual discharge of dispatches, and that some minor differences may be adjusted and an "amicable atmosphere" occasionally created at Geneva, in no way helps to solve the major problems that divide nations or enables them to understand each other's point of view. Powers, great and small, with irreconcilable interests feel that they cannot afford to understand each other's standpoint. Responsible Statesmen from France, Germany, and Great Britain may meet and eat and drink and smoke and talk until they are black in the face without altering the fundamentals of their position. The most they can hope to do is to deceive each other, unless they prefer to deceive themselves. Futile Scraps of Paper No Covenants, Draft Treaties of Mutual Assistance, Protocols, or Disarmament Commissions, or other "Scraps of Paper " will bring the world one inch nearer perpetual peace so long as any sufficiently formidable Power is bent on aggression. Such was unhappily the case before the Great War and was the chief cause of that catastrophe. It is unhappily the case to-day. No League of Nations such as now sits at Geneva would or could have saved Belgium from invasion, because it would have been a mere strife of tongues while the aggressor acted. So it would be to-morrow, and we delude ourselves by supposing otherwise. The League would be impotent to the point of paralysis if any Great Power attacked any of its neighbours. It would split into two camps consisting d (1) those who resented the aggression to the point of being prepared to resist it; (2) those who sympathized with th |