INTERNATIONAL: Democratic Peace

Trooping to Geneva this week went delegates to the annual Assembly of the League of Nations. In their ears rang a great speech made by Premier Leon Blum of France last week in reply to the Nürnberg Congress orations of Chancellor Adolf Hitler (TiME, Sept. 21).

Between the French Jew and the German “Aryan” antithesis was complete: M. Blum last week was for democracy and a generally concluded European peace to maintain the status quo under a strengthened League of Nations; Herr Hitler was for authoritarian States willing to make no more than a regional peace in Western Europe, scorned the League of Nations, and was keen for altering the status quo to give Germany at least some colonies and perhaps some rich chunks of Russian territory.

“The principles evolved by the French Revolution of 1789 have spread over the entire world,” polished and rational Orator Blum cried. “Those who condemn them often unknowingly profit from them. Without the civil liberty that the French Revolution proclaimed, the authoritarian States of Europe would not today have at their heads men risen from the depths of the people and drawing from that origin their titles and their pride.

“Stability has been spoken of. The history of the last century has demonstrated that democratic regimes offered at least as much stability as governmental systems founded on the all-powerfulness of one man, even though that all-powerfulness be explained by genius.

“Order, which is indispensable to all collective organization, has been spoken of. Democracy is precisely the regime that permits societies to progress in order, since it makes progress depend on the general will and on a more and more enlightened will.

“France can cite her own example. For three months the Government has been carrying out important social reforms. It has done so with the widest popular movement of expectation and hope. But it has done so without a single clash between citizens, without order having been disturbed in the street a single time, without a single institution having been overthrown, without a single citizen having been despoiled.”

Thanks to Democracy. After these deep digs at Dictators Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini, fervent M. Blum continued:

“Is it not thanks to democracy that Britain has been able to control that continuous and almost insensible adaptation between progress and tradition which has permitted her to transform all her institutions while remaining faithful to herself? Is it not thanks to democracy that the United States has been able to bring about a prodigious economic renewal in a few years without compromising legal order for a single instant, without going outside the framework of the Constitution elaborated just after the War of Independence by American disciples of Montesquieu and Rousseau? “No, democracy does not emerge condemned by the long trial waged against it! It is justified by proof as by reason. The debt that humanity has contracted toward it during 150 years is infinite. France knows it and France remains faithful to democracy.”

No Doctrinal War— As a Socialist, Premier Blum touched off his heaviest guns against the crusade to destroy Bolshevism now simultaneously envisioned by Realmleader Hitler and Pope Pius XI. “Although she keeps her full confidence in the age-old power to spread her influence, France,” cried her Premier, “does not claim to impose on any people the principles of government that she believes wisest and justest. She respects their sovereignty as she expects them to respect hers. France rejects utterly the idea of wars of propaganda and wars of reprisal. The causes of war that weigh on the world are already heavy enough without France wanting to add to them with a doctrinal crusade, even for ideas that France believes right and just, even against systems that she believes false and evil!”

Finally Leon Blum reaffirmed those principles which Benito Mussolini, with his conquest of Ethiopia, and Japan, with her seizure of Manchukuo, have tried to make seem old-fashioned and even silly. “French Peace supposes for all nations Liberty for self-determination!” cried Orator Blum. “It supposes Equality of right between States, big or little, as between individuals. It supposes Fraternity, that is to say, progressive elimination of war, solidarity against an aggressor and material and moral disarmament.

“It is because the League of Nations is itself founded on these principles that the international action of France is founded on the League. It seeks to strengthen the links between the nations that meet at Geneva to assure to the covenant she has signed more & more force and effectiveness. It seeks to organize mutual assistance. It seeks to halt the armaments race and this country will not cease to repeat her appeal until she has been heard.”

In his final radio appeal, rousing to every European listener who swears by democracy, the Premier of France climaxed: “History shows that no real, stable peace can be established on injustice or on egoism! . . . The only stable peace is a general peace—that only viable solutions of European problems are all-round settlements.”

Gestures & Panic. On arriving at the League of Nations’ new headquarters which smell strongly of fresh plaster and paint, the British and French delegations, as a conciliatory gesture to Dictator Benito Mussolini, set about trying to pack the Credentials Committee with a view to having it bar His Majesty Haile Selassie who in London had clapped on his derby hat and was winging toward Geneva. As a conciliatory gesture to Dictator Adolf Hitler, some of whose German bombing planes were strafing the Red militia in Spain last week (see p. 19). the British and French lobbied furiously in efforts to prevent Spanish Foreign Minister Julio Alvarez del Vayo from asking the Assembly of the League of Nations to do something about Portuguese-German-Italian aid to the Spanish Whites and about the Great Powers embargo denying arms to Madrid. In a Geneva newspaper article signed by Portuguese Foreign Minister Dr. Armindo Rodriguez de Ittau Monteiro, he strongly hinted that if Madrid by any chance won the Spanish Civil War its Reds would next have to fight Portugal.

In something like a League panic, sincere Geneva friends of Democracy did their best to temporize, talked of referring matters to The Hague Court—anything for delay. When short-sighted Turkish Foreign Minister Tewtik Rushtu Aras first sat down he did not notice that in the new League building had been hung a magnificent antique tapestry depicting Emperor Charles V driving the Turkish barbarians in confusion from Vienna in the year 1529. When through his thick-lensed spectacles Dr. Aras at last saw this he raised a shrill rumpus and the League, as a conciliatory gesture to Dictator Mustafa Kamal Atatürk, hastily removed the tapestry.