World Affairs Institute

WE FAIL TO UNDERSTANDSource: Advocate of Peace through Justice, Vol. 88, No. 6 (JUNE, 1926), pp. 330-331Published by: World Affairs InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20661279 .

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330 ADVOCATE OF PEACE June

perior naval forces. The United States has eighteen battle ships, three aircraft

carriers, thirty-one cruisers of various

kinds, two hundred ninety-five destroyers, one hundred twenty-nine submarines, and two hundred seventy-five other craft, such as mine-sweepers, patrol vessels, and cargo

ships. But the total active army strength of the United States is less than 140,000, which of course does not include the Na

tional Guard, with 177,000 ; the Organ ized Reserve of 96,000, the Citizens' Mil

itary Training Camps, 33,000, and the Re serve Officers' Training Corps of 110,000. There is nothing in all this comparable with the German menace through the

generation prior to 1914. But here the outstanding thought con

tinues to intrude itself that the physical military machinery is not the important nor a very considerable part of the prob lem of war and peace. Physical arms are

inert and harmless things. It is the idea, the motive, behind them that counts.

With warlike ambitions the smallest ar

maments, such as a pistol in Sarajevo, may threaten the peace of the world.

So it is well that the Preparatory Com

mission, paving the way for a later con ference on the reduction of armaments, is

meeting and discussing these questions. Besides the Preparatory Commission, which convened on May 18, there is the Permanent Advisory Commission for Mil

itary and Naval and Air Questions, which convened on the day following. There is also a body addressing itself to questions connected with industry and transport.

While their studies and conferences will be helpful for any future efforts to con trol armaments, the difficulties are so

great that it is scarcely reasonable to ex

pect very definite results from their de liberations. The absence of representa tives of the Union of Socialist Soviet

Republics is, of course, a serious embar

rassment, for any successful achievement

adequate to the need must mean the

friendly co-operation of all the nations.

Regional agreements, like the Washington Conference of 1912, favored now at Gen eva by Japan, may be steps in the right direction, but they will be short and falter

ing steps. Thus here again the nations find them

selves face to face with the necessity of

providing some way other than by force of arms for the promotion of their enlight ened interests and the advancement of their common weal.

WE FAIL TO UNDERSTAND

H UGH S. CUMMINGS, Surgeon General, United States Public

Health Service, is reported to have given formal notice, May 17, to the sixty-five nations attending the International Health Conference in Paris that the American Government disapproves the ef forts of the League of Nations to have its own international committee substi tuted for a similar international body operating from Paris under the authority of the first health congress. It is this Paris organization which the American Government supports and purposes to continue to support.

This action by our Government presents a situation difficult to understand. We sent a delegation in 1923 to the League conference on the Opium Traffic. The head of our Children's Bureau of the De

partment of Labor sat with the Com mittee on Traffic in Women and Chil dren. Our Public Health Service in

Washington organized a League inter

change of medical officers in the United States. We sent experts to the conference on Customs Formalities. We have been

represented in the conference on Com munication and Transit, in the conference on Obscene Publications, in the confer ence on the International Control of

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1926 EDITORIALS 331

Traffic in Arms. In the light of these

facts, it is difficult to see why now we

should seem to snub the League in its

efforts to take over the work of the Paris health organization.

It is evident that there is a purpose to

develop the International Health Bureau of Paris into a center for the concentra tion of health conditions throughout the

world without reference to the activities

of the League. It is difficult to under

stand this in the light of the fact that on

the formation of the League a new inter

national health organization was set up on the foundations of the International

Public Hygiene Association, an amalga mation which became operative in the

fall of 1923. It was thus thought that

the League health organization in

cluded practically all the governments of

the world. It was claimed that this or

ganization was working in closest har

mony with the Red Cross, the Pan-Ameri can Sanitary Bureau, and the Rockefeller

Foundation. We have been told from time to time of the great work done by this new organization in its fight against typhus in Poland and in its work with the

refugees particularly in Greece. It has been conducting investigations in the east ern Mediterranean and in the Far East. It has worked upon the problem of "sleep

ing-sickness" in tropical Afrioa, of the transmission of disease by waterways, of the sanitation of ports, of the control of

malaria. It has been conducting an in

quiry into the causes of various forms of

cancer, into the facts of the influence of

opium and anthrax. It is difficult to

understand, therefore, why just now our

government should not only turn away from the health work of the League, but condemn certain of its activities. At this

very moment our delegates are sitting with a commission set up by the League for the study of the problem of arma

ments. It is difficult to escape the im

pression that our government is not pur

suing what might be called a consistent

policy in its relations with the League of Nations.

It is possible that to demand consistency in governmental policy would be to ask too much. Our refusal to join the League of Nations, however, necessarily embar rasses our government in its various at

tempts to work with the agencies of the

League. Without knowing all the facts, any criticism of our government in such

major matters is likely to be unjust, but, under the circumstances, our embarrass

ment seems inevitable and likely to con

tinue.

Perhaps after the September meetings of the League, and our November elec

tions, we may expect from our adminis tration a clearer definition of aims with reference to the various labors of the

League of Nations.

THREE OUTSTANDING MATTERS OF OUR HEMISPHERE

T HE three outstanding international matters of particular interest just

now to our Western Hemisphere are

the Tacna-Arica dispute between Peru and Chile, the centennial celebration in June of the International Congress at

Panama, and the Second Pan-American Red Cross Conference, in Washington, May 25 to June 5.

The efforts to solve the boundary dis

pute between Peru and Chile are at this

writing too obscure for helpful discussion. Our government is still sending experts to the plebiscitary zone. Peru seems to

be pursuing a policy of wary watchful

waiting. Chile is finding it necessary to

explain why she now favors what she once

denounced and why she now denounces

what she once favored. In the meantime

she continues to demand that the plebis cite go on. There are evidences that our

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