Assembly's Week

The Fifth Assembly of The League of Nations (TIME, Sept. 8) heard two speeches on security and disarmament. One was from the lips of Premier Ramsay MacDonald of Britain. The other was from Premier Eduard Her riot of France.

The contents of the speeches may be summed up philosophically in the words of Blaise Pascal, famed 17th Century mathematician and Cartesian philosopher par excellence: "Justice without Power is futility. Power without Justice is tyranny."

Premier MacDonald took the contra stand on the first part of Pascal's aphorism. The gist of his speech went to support the thesis that Justice without Power is security. He pleaded for arbitration among nations based upon Right and Justice and not upon Might. He agreed that "Power without Justice is tyranny," but, losing himself in abstruse idealism, he wanted the annihilation of power by disarmament and the extirpation of tyranny by arbitration. Said he: "Our position in this: We don't believe a military alliance is go ing to bring security. We believe a military alliance in an agreement for security, like the mustard seed, is small to begin with; and that this seed with the years will grow and grow, until at last the tree produced from it will overshadow the whole heavens; and we shall be back exactly at the military position at which we found ourselves in 1914.

This did not suit Premier Herriot. In theory he agreed with his British colleague, but in practice he accepted Pascal's famous pensee with a single addition: "Justice with power is security" -- meaning that arbitration backed by force was the only guarantee of security that would be accepted by France. Said he: "Arbitration is necessary, but arbitration is not sufficient. Arbitration, security, disarmament-- those are three things inseparable. We must create something more than an abstract form of words. Arbitration shows good faith, but we must protect good faith. We must protect those states which show their good faith by accepting arbitration. When a nation has given an example by accepting freely and voluntarily the principle that all its disputes shall be dealt with by arbitration, then, whatever the size of that state, large or small, it has the right to security and the right to justice.

"Mr. MacDonald says arbitration is justice without passion. I agree. But you cannot have justice without some force behind it. We must combine right and might. We must make what is mighty, just; and what is just, mighty. If we are to give to people what they desire, if we are to save them a repeti tion of their sufferings, we have got to provide for their security."

Premier Herriot was backed by all the small states of Europe. All thought that Premier MacDonald had put the cart before the horse--that is, that he had laid the emphasis upon arbitration and disarmament when it ought to have been on security.

The day following Premier Herriot's speech the Assembly passed unanimously, amid tremendous enthusiasm, a resolution which said, in effect:

"The Assembly, noting the declarations of the Governments represented, remarks with satisfaction that they contain a basis of understanding tending to establish and secure peace; and it decides as follows:

"1) To call an international conference on armaments at the earliest possible moment.

"2) To consider the material dealing with security and reduction of armaments.

"3) To examine, in view of possible amendments, articles in the League's Covenant and statutes establishing the Permanent Court of International Justice, in order to facilitate the work of the proposed conference."

In support of the resolution, Premier MacDonald was quoted: "If this Assembly could only be recorded in the pages of history as an Assembly which, for the time, did not give merely lip service to peace, but brain service, it would be distinguished above all gatherings of mankind that have met hitherto."

Premier Herriot hopefully declared: "Now begins the detailed study of the difficult questions which Premier Mac-Donald has already outlined--problems of mutual assistance and, above all, the great problem of international solidarity through the state which must yet be crossed. The road is long, but we must traverse it arm in arm, associating our efforts and our endeavors."

League officials declared that the Disarmament Commission would frame a treaty of security and mutual assistance to replace the old one (see below). The Commission is also to concern itself with questions relating to the convocation of a land disarmament conference which European Powers decided should be held in Europe. It was hoped to call the new conference within a year.

Security was and is the paramount issue in international European politics. With the horrors of war no distant dream, the Continental states have demanded security against future aggressive warfare, but, lacking tangible guarantees, they have declined to reduce their armies to a strength below what they considered was indispensable to their national safety.

The establishment of the League of Nations provided no security for peace. The Washington Conference was not even a halfway measure, for it only restricted the number of capital ships in the Navies of the U. S., Britain, France, Italy and Japan; it was totally unconnected with land armaments and barely touched the problem of security. The Treaty of Mutual Assistance (TIME, Aug. 20, 1923) provided for reduction of land armaments and gave security to an attacked nation by stipulation for armed attack by all states in the region of the war on the aggressor nation. This treaty was, however, unacceptable to the U. S. and Britain, virtually because it smacked of armed alliance.

A new plan, called "the American Plan," was put forward recently by Prof. James T. Shotwell of Columbia University and General Tasker Howard Bliss, backed by a number of eminent U. S. experts (TIME, June 30). This plan, which is a modification of the League's Treaty of Mutual Guarantees, prescribes regular triannual meetings of a commission to "consider progressively the question of disarmament." Under this plan, aggressive warfare is to be outlawed as an international crime with specific sanctions to be taken against attacking nations. The plan engaged the attention of the League members at present in Geneva and was expected to form a basis in future dis cussions of disarmament and security problems.