LORD BEAVERBROOK AND GENERAL SMUTS
AFORTNIGHT ago General Smuts was talking to the world on freedom. A week ago Lord Beaver- brook was talking to the world on isolation. A com- parison between the two pronouncements is inevitable.), and in a sense Lord Beaverbrook has challenged it, for though the arrangement that he should take part in a series of broadcasts on war was no doubt made long ago, it was quite open to him to treat his subject as he chose. He chose in fact to treat it on his own familiar lines. And having had the opportunity (whether he took it or not) of considering the ideal set before the students of St. Andrews by the Dominion statesman whom they elected as their Rector three years ago, he still prefers the close horizon within which his own conception of the world is set.
On all kinds of points of detail, and some that are by no means detail, Lord Beaverbrook is in error. He declares that an incomplete League of Nations must in time become an alliance of those in the League against those outside it. When has the League ever constituted, or looked like constituting, an alliance against the United States ? He declares that the Dominions will not follow us if we go into quarrels in Europe, that the result of our doing so will be to disrupt the Empire. Has he quite forgotten an intervention in European affairs that began in a certain August twenty years ago, and does he hold that that resulted in the disruption of the Empire ? If so, the Rector of St. Andrews might enlighten him. He says that under the Treaty of Locarno we are expected to go to the aid of Germany if that country is attacked by France. He omits to add that that is true only if the attack is wanton and unpro- voked. He says the purpose of the Treaty was to secure disarmament. It was not—unfortunately. Disarmament was pushed aside into a preamble which binds no one. The purpose of the Treaty was to establish security as between France and Germany, and in that it has been substantially successful. France, says Lord Beaverbrook, has refused to disarm. She has not. In certain directions, notably the air, she has proposed considerably more disarmament than the British Government was prepared to counten- ance.
It may no doubt be argued that Lord Beaverbrook can be wrong on all these matters and yet right in his main thesis. That may be conceded—though the air of confident infallibility which governs the form of Lord Beaverbrook's speeches is not always justified by their contents. His thesis is familiar enough by this time. It is essential, he insists, that we should keep out of war ; and the only way to do that is to cut clear from Europe, identify ourselves more and more with our Empire, and become the companions of the United States in isolation. Now it is obvious that in such a doctrine there is both good and bad. The desire to keep out of war is shared by every Englishman—even when it is so phrased as to resemble strangely the peace-at- any-price gospel. And with all that Lord Beaverbrook says about fostering the unity of the Empire everyone not deliberately blind to the immense possibilities of that great association of kindred but independent peoples will associate himself without reserve. But that is not the essence of Lord Beaverbrook's doctrine. The essence of it is the demand that this country— if possible with the Empire—shall stand aside and minister as best it can to its own prosperity while Europe or any other part of the world plunges into whatever hell it chooses. And that he dignifies by the name of ideal. It is, in faet, not even common sense. Lord Beaverbrook talks as though we were a detached island on the coast of Europe, as before the Normans or the Danes or the Saxons came. In fact we are in contact with other Powers in every continent of the globe. When Lord Lansdowne set about composing our quarrels with France in 1904 he had to take up differences in Newfoundland and Siam and Nigeria and Egypt and Morocco. When we found ourselves on the verge or war with France in 1898 it was because of a clash between outposts in some unknown jungle on the Upper Nile. And was it a European quarrel that took us into the Boer War ? What is the good of talking of isolation in a world like that ? And contacts in the world today are being driven relentlessly closer every year.
But what of Lord Beaverbrook's ideal even if it could be realized ? Let it be stated verbatim : " It simply means all the Anglo-Saxon people: saying, ' We take no part in wars.' That is the splendid possi- bility which the isolation policy holds out to us. Will anyone deny that it is infinitely finer and more hopeful, more appealing to the highest ideals of man than anything we could achieve by a policy of interference in Europe ? "
The answer is Yes. Many people will deny it. They would express their larger vision in whatever words they could command. But it so happens that the denial has been given—in advance—by one of the greatest orators of the Empire. When General Smuts at St. Andrews cited for our encouragement one great achievement- " the human mind has already solved most difficult pro- blems in national organization and even begun to lay the foundations of an international organization "—he over- leaped Lord Beaverbrook's narrow horizons in a sentence. Lord Beaverbrook sees no inspiration in the task of laying the foundations of an international organization—whether merely to save the world from war or for more positive and constructive tasks as well. He is not concerned to save the world from war. It can go to perdition in any way it chooses, provided the British Empire keeps out of the welter. And of that there is actually far less chance than there was of America keeping out of the European struggle seventeen years ago.
And if Lord Beaverbrook presses his question, and asks what higher ideal can be conceived than the isolation he preaches; let General Smuts answer him a little further : " I have no doubt that the present disquieting phase will' pass, and that a new renascence of the European spirit will follow. What a glorious opportunity to our youth today to live in times when the situation is once more fluid and the world is once more in the remaking ! Are we going to leave a free field to those who threaten our fundamental human ideals and our proudest heritage from the past ? Or are we going to join in the battle— the age-long battle which has been going forward from the dawn of history—for the breaking of our bonds and the enlargement of our range of free choice and free action ? "
Not one word of that is true just because it was General Smuts who said it. The authority of the speaker is great, but it can impose no creed on us that our own spirits do not recognize as imperative. It is simply that he has stated a fundamental . truth in noble and compelling language and cut a way for it direct to our inmost con- science. The task for this generation, and many genera- tions to come, was set at Paris fifteen years ago when British statesmen of every party put their hand, like General Smuts himself, to the League of Nations Covenant. Their aim was vast and inspiring, to save the world—not simply the British Empire or the Anglo-Saxon peoples— from the unutterable scourge of war. Lord Beaverbrook sees the Anglo-Saxon peoples saying, " We will take no part in wars." All the world in fact has said that in as many words, when it signed the Pact of Paris in 1928. An ideal at least has been set up, far transcending Lord Beaverbrook's. The leaders of every country in the British Empire have endorsed it. And the Empire will realize its own possibilities by throwing all its powers into that great task as surely and decisively as it would narrow and repudiate them by accepting the shackles Lord Beaverbrook is fain to fasten on it.
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