ENDS AND MEANS
staff officers of the various nations will draw up plans for
the invasion and conquest of their own country? or that
aviators will loyally co-operate in the slaughter of their
own people? How can all nations be persuaded to con-
tribute men and materials towards the international force?
Should the contributions be equal ? If they are not equal
and a few great powers supply the major part of the force,
what is to prevent these powers from establishing a military
tyranny over the whole world? The project sponsored by
the New Commonwealth and the Labour Party combines
all the moral and political vices of militarism with all the
hopeless impracticability of a Utopian dream. In the
language of the stud book, the International Police Force
may be described as by Machiavelli out of News from
Nowhere.
Morality and practical common sense are at one in
demanding that efforts to create an * International Police
Force' shall be strenuously resisted and that Article XVI
shall be removed from the Covenant. The effort to stop
war, once it has broken out, by means of military sanctions
or the action of an international army and air force is
foredoomed to failure. War cannot be stopped by more
war. All that more war can do is to widen the**area of
destruction and place new obstacles in the way of reaching
, a just and humane settlement of international disputes.
It should be the business of the League to concentrate all
its energies on the work of preventing wars from breaking
out. This it can do by developing existing machinery for
the peaceable settlement of international disputes; by
extending the field of international co-operation in the
study and solution of outstanding social problems; and
finally, by devising means for eliminating the causes
of war.
About tie machinery of peaceful settlement and inter-
national co-operation it is unnecessary to say very much.
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