One Good Turn
600 THE COMMONWEAL October I6, 1929 the rightness of the solution proposed in 1917 are banned, the time has come to ask why. What is the character of the propagandist forces which have so...
...Opinion in their country has always held that armed strength is a unit--that the sum total of a nation's land and sea forces constitutes its real effectiveness against possible attack...
...At present all talk of further co6peration toward disarmament might very easily be blocked if Paris refused to discuss naval parity for its own sake...
...After all the legitimacy with which Mr...
...One cannot help feeling that Mr...
...So near to home, we are all powerful, and if We should ever need the islands in the defense of the Panama Canal, we could take them without trouble...
...Acceptance of the naval quotas arrived at during the Washington conference therefore strengthened the French resolve to maintain a large standing army and to project the development of auxiliary craft...
...MacDonald's statement that Great Britain will not arm against the United States applies to those islands as well as to cruisers, and likewise his complementary statement that Great Britain's defenses must be kept in line with the ambitions of other powers...
...SOME newspapers are again suggesting that the best proof which Great Britain could offer us of her friendship would be to surrender her naval Caribbean defenses in the West Indies...
...Shearer, possessing threats which have all the pressure of realities...
...The good-will that must be proved here is our own, especially since Englishmen have not forgotten what ex-Senator James Reed used to say about the British West Indies lying in the path of our "manifest destiny...
...John MacNab should, with a view to his own eventual success, decide whether the .American people can reasonably be expected to obey a law in the reasonableness of which they do not believe and regarding the paternity of which they have no doubts...
...Are they made in the image of Mr...
...But it is, to say the least, very odd that after a dozen years of "experiment," the force most genuinely responsible for the cbntinued virility of the Eighteenth Amendment is not public opinion, not a department of the government, not a share of the police forces, but a bureau which exists on the margin of all these and expresses the will of a definite group...
...It is to be hoped that he will...
...At the Light same time it is essential to avoid the semblance of anything like an AngloAmerican entente...
...Gustav Stresemann was expected to retire from German public affairs at an early date, his sudden death nevertheless seriously afExponent of fects the political outlook of the Reich...
...WEEK BY WEEK R. RAMSAY MACDONALD has arrived and found a cordial welcome...
...Shearer veiled his defense of a "big navy program" does not differ in essentials from the legitimacy with which the Anti-saloon League has invested its conduct...
...And so it is not a question of whether Great Britain should give up her bases there, but whether we wish to guarantee the defense of the islands against aggression by others or by ourselves...
...Paris statesmen are obliged, whether they so desire or not, to treat the problem of security as incomparably important...
...What is the character of the propagandist forces which have so completely muzzled Washington that elected representatives will drink jovially in private but faint at the very mention of drink in public...
...Why, then, is this totally barred from consideration of the most weighty matter in the current catalogue of problems...
...But there is no denyifig the fact that the fruits of this policy may depend, in the immediate future, upon minor political incidents requiring firm and intelligent diplomacy...
...We admit that a nation which decides to adopt prohibition is also a nation which is entitled to get prohibition...
...THOUGHDr...
...Herr Stresemann was the reason why the Deutsche Volkspartei existed...
...But no part of this question can have a bearing on Great Britain's friendship for ourselves...
...To arouse French suspicion now would mean injecting an element of serious mistrust into the coming disarmament conference...
...This year the same tasks there confronted are being taken up with renewed hope, precisely because citizens everywhere are being made to see the issue at stake and the nature of the groups concerned with it...
...A recent news bulletin issued by the Foreign Policy Association therefore properly raises a caution signal...
...Last year the work of the Geneva Conference came to an abrupt stop...
...the New The six years during which he served Germany as Foreign Minister sufficed to lay the foundations of a newly Europeanized Germany, anxious to secure the good-will of neighboring peoples and determined to abandon all schemes of unprofitable reaction...
...In the Caribbean, for instance, there is the threat of raiders to be considered...
...We need to remember the flurry caused by news of a "secret treaty" between England and France and to bear in mind what constructions may be put upon premature "harmony" pronouncements by public opinion on the continent...
...The result greatly justifies renewed confidence in public opinion...
...Yet it is doubtful what advantages, real or theoDestiny retical, there could be for us in a disarmed Caribbean...
...Or are they gentle Iambs whose candor is proof against the seductions of this world ? One good turn deserves another...
...One must believe he is absolutely sincere in the endeavor to remove causes of dissension between Great Britain and the United States, so that much profit A Caution may be expected from the visit...
...A country bent on finding out the forces which have struggled to increase the fighting craft might well be a country interested in discerning whether a specific attempt to impose "morality" has itself been strictly moral...
...600 THE COMMONWEAL October I6, 1929 the rightness of the solution proposed in 1917 are banned, the time has come to ask why...
Vol. 10 • October 1929 • No. 24
