Peace and Disarmament

Extract

In the Preamble to the Covenant of the League of Nations it is stated that the League is brought into existence ‘to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security.’ The first article of the Covenant which is concerned with policy (Art. 8) deals with the reduction of armaments. The League Secretariat accepts disarmament as the touchstone of the work of organizing peace. Peace is the end and the extent to which the nations of the world approach that end is to be judged by the extent to which they approach disarmament.

Just as peace is the end of the League, so is the demand for peace its foundation. But, founded also on the Treaties of Peace, it is, like them, grounded in war, partaking of the conditions of war, its ambitions, its hatreds and fears. It has then to obey two masters who do not always agree. Itself a result of the last war, it is called upon to prevent the next.

The position is further complicated by the fact that the demand for peace is itself largely a result of the War. Nothing so widespread and at the same time so deep has been known before as a force in international affairs. Though there was a demand for peace, nothing comparable existed before 1914. In England at least it did not exist until the Somme brought disillusionment, a disillusionment made more bitter by Paschendaele, March, 1918, and the submarine campaign. Born, too, of war, the demand for peace is based rather upon disgust and horror for the one than upon love for the other.