Disarmament

LIEUT.-COLONEL GEORGE A. DREW, the President, introduced the speaker.

MR. DUPRE:--Mr. President, Gentlemen: I must confess that I feel rather awkward and nervous-I, from the Province of Quebec, coming here to address an audience in Toronto-but I took precautions and I have here two of my bodyguard. I have here two of my friends from Quebec City-two captains of industry who carry on business in the City of Toronto. I name my two friends--Mr. L. J. Adjutor Amyot and Mr. Horatio Amyot. Their father was the Honourable G. E. Amyot, one of the outstanding leaders in the industrial world of the Province of Quebec and I may say that his two sons are following in his footsteps. I wouldn't say that they are "two chips off the old block" but I would say that they are "duplicates of the old block."

I feel nervous for a second reason. I am sure that the great majority of you know more about disarmament than I do. I have here" next to me, your learned and distinguished President (Colonel Drew) whose articles have been read all over the country and it seems to me that he should be the lecturer today and riot I.

At all events, since I have accepted his kind invitation, all I have to say before I commence, is that this is a very, very dry subject. It is very hard to crack jokes on disarmament and I am sorry that some of you didn't bring any pillows in order to sleep more comfortably.

Practically every government in the world at the present time is struggling with almost unbearable economic and financial difficulties -economizing in this and economizing in that. They are hunting for a dollar here and a dollar there in order to balance budgets. Yet, in the midst of this crushing struggle we can find more than five billion dollars--I didn't say "million," but five billion dollars-to spend on instruments of destruction. If this expenditure ensured peace it might be justified, but we know now, after the struggle of the last war that swollen armaments do not ensure peace, but provoke war.

There was once a motto: "If you wish peace, prepare for war"; but the truth of this idea was tested in July, 1914" when every country in Europe was armed to the teeth. Did armaments prevent war then? There are many who think they gave Europe the final push into the abyss of destruction. Not only do armaments fail to prevent war, but they also fail to ensure victory, and Germany's bitter experience proved that fact for all time. Armaments can neither prevent a war nor win a war and yet we spend five billion dollars a year on armaments.

Possibly Bernard Shaw for once was right when he said: "If the rest of the universe is inhabited, the world is its lunatic asylum," present company excepted, including the audience over the radio, because maybe my wife is listening!

There is one encouraging fact, however. The world is becoming conscious of this particular madness and that is the first step toward sanity. We have done little disarming yet, but the fact remains that there is a vigorous and active public opinion in that direction. There is, for the first time in the history of the world, a serious,, sustained and organized disarmament movement.

That movement, Gentlemen, was born out of the horror and futility of the last war. It has developed since that war and culminated in February, 1932, in the assembly in Geneva of the first World Conference for the reduction and limitation of armaments, with fifty-eight sovereign states represented. That Conference sat for six months and a half. It was very effective in talk; it was not so effective in action. It passed desirable resolutions. It enunciated praiseworthy ideas. But warships still ride the seas; tanks still rumble over the countryside; fighting aeroplanes still skim the clouds.

The Conference will meet again at the end of this month and it would not seem inappropriate at this time, to examine briefly the results of the first session of the Conference and the prospects for the second. I have not time to go into the first session in detail. The concrete results, I admit, are discouraging. The representatives were unanimous in their agreement on certain desirable principles but they were far from unanimous as to how these principles could be translated into action.

Take qualitative disarmament which means, in other words, armaments limited" riot only by number but by type. Through the abolition of those arms which are aggressive in character, efficacious against defence, or particularly dangerous to the civilian population.

It is one thing to say that offensive weapons should be abolished but it is quite another thing to decide what weapons are offensive. The Conference tried for weeks, and at the risk of seeming to be flippant, I am tempted to say that the only conclusions which were reached were

First: All weapons are offensive if you do not possess any of them.

Second: The offensiveness of a weapon depends on whether you are behind it or in front of it.

And, third: Any weapon is offensive if you use it in an offensive manner.

And that is about as far as we got. There is, of course, another side of the picture. The results have not been purely negative. Essential principles have been support. The uncontrolled development of the new weapon, air warfare, has been checked. A first step toward direct quantitative limitation of heavy artillery has been indicated; provision for a permanent Disarmament Commission has been made and some form of limitation of national defence expenditure has been approved in principle. The necessity for a solution of the problem of the private and state manufacture of arms,, one of the vital phases of the whole disarmament question, has been reaffirmed. But the Conference has done more. It has kept the necessity of disarmament before the world. It has driven home more than ever the urgency of the problem. I venture to say that the closing resolution, summing up the achievement of the first session, would have been greeted with triumph when the Conference opened on February 2nd, but it was greeted with silence on July 23rd. Why? Why was it accepted with such lack of enthusiasm? Because of the progress of ideas during the last twelve months.

Further, if public opinion continues to work--and we must attend to that -the resolution from the next session of the Conference will be as far ahead of that of July 23rd, as the last one was ahead of anything that could have been carried on February 2nd.

There is another point-one often overlooked by critics of the results of the Conference-and that is that the conclusions of the final resolution are not the last word, but the first.

If that resolution contained all that could be done in respect to the limitation and reduction of armaments, it could be thrown in the waste paper basket. But it is only the first step and we must believe and see that it will he followed by others.

What are some of the obstacles to the second step? Last February, the Conference opened to the echo of guns in the Far East. Indeed, the first session of the Conference called to ensure peace, had to be postponed for three hours to permit the Council of the League to settle a war. I need hardly remind you that that obstacle to successful disarmament still remains. So far as the Orient is concerned" the Dove of Peace finds it very difficult to be heard above the cannon's roar.

But there are other difficulties, and of these, the fundamental are political and not technical. That is why, Mr. President and Gentlemen, so many of these articles you read in the papers mistake their purpose. It is because the writers very often forget that the problem of disarmament before being a technical question, is a political question.

Armaments will exist until political conditions are such that there is no need for them. Armaments are merely the symptoms of a disease. If you want to remove the symptoms, get at the causes of the disease itself. It is the only way. You can not cure a fever by powdering the rash.

What, then, are these causes? They are fear, insecurity, injustice and resentment. All these have produced in Europe today, a feeling that some day there is going to be an explosion. The primary interest of the European States is protection against that explosion.

Self preservation is the first law of human nature and national preservation is the first law of political behaviour.

In spite of the development of the post-war machinery for arbitration and conciliation" in spite of treaties, pacts and guarantees, some nations still hope to find that preservation in armaments.

It is the political situation which prevents disarmament. Do you think that nations squander billions every year on guns, tanks, aeroplanes and warships for the joy of spending? They spend because they are convinced that therein lies security. It is fear that is the father of armaments. Remove fear and you remove guns, bayonets, poisonous gases and other abominations.

If every nation felt secure, disarmament would come of itself. Take the case of our own country. We do not want an ,army or a navy. We feel that we do not need it. We feel that we do not need it because no one wants to attack us. We have a security based, not on the foundation of armaments, but on the good will and respect of our neighbours. As Sir George Perley so well said at Geneva: "The best security for any state is the good will of its neighbours." Unfortunately, that is not the situation in Europe and until it is so, the road to disarmament will be a long and a very difficult one.

The first problem then, is the question of security. The French have recently proposed for the consideration of the Conference a very elaborate political solution for this problem" based on the organization of peace through guarantees of collective action against an aggressor state. It would put sanction behind the Kellogg Pact and force behind the League of Nations. It would pool all aggressive armaments and place them under the orders of the League. It would lay the basis for an international police force.

But hitherto, Anglo-Saxon state-s have fought shy of the French security thesis. They have felt that sanctions might not always be used against the right people, because, even with the best of intentions, how can you be sure in a dispute which state is the aggressor? It is the function of statesmen, as you know, to cause the other man to cause a war. We have been cold to the French idea for another reason. Does not any scheme for the oranization of peace really mean a scheme for the preservation of the status quo in Europe? And are we-three thousand miles away-to pledge ourselves to send contingents to be butchered on foreign soil because European governments have decided to revise by force an unjust political agreement?

Our position has been that the only lasting organization of peace must be based on prevention of war, not on the punishment of the aggressor. Before this can be achieved, there must be a real reduction in armaments. There can be no security while boundaries are fringed with bayonets. In short, disarmament before security, is the Anglo-Saxon thesis, and the French thesis is political security before disarmament.

There is a distinction between the two theses and this is the crux of the disarmament problem. The French and the Anglo-Saxon views must be reconciled. A year ago that was a well nigh impossible task; today it seems not beyond the bounds of statesmanship, for the recent French proposals are, from our point of view, less open to objection than any that have issued from the Quai d'Orsay in the last ten years. The other important political difficulty has been Germany and the problem of equality. As France shouts "Security," Germany shouts "Equality." She means by this that the unilateral disarmament forced upon her by the Treaty of Versailles must go.

You remember that the Treaty of Versailles forcibly reduced the armaments of the defeated powers to a defensive level. Germany accepted the disarmament, though, she claims, only on the understanding that all the powers would follow her lead. She finds that promise in the Covenant of the League of Nations and in the Treaty. The disarmament imposed on Germany as the result of bitter defeat is to her the badge of humiliation. So she asks: "Have the other powers carried out their promises? If not, why should we accept any longer a forced and unilateral disarmament?" In some repects this is the paramount question today in Germany's foreign policy. At the Conference, "equal status" was the watchword of the German delegates. They said, "You must come down to us or we must be allowed to go up to you." No great nation will forever accept a permanent status of inferiority.

This conception coloured the German attitude toward every proposal made last spring. If it were a question of what level of armaments was necessary for defence only, Germany had the answer: "It is our level as decided by the Treaty of Versailles." If it were a question of what weapons should be abolished, their reply was: "Those weapons forbidden to us by the Treaty of Versailles."

In July, when the closing resolution of the Conference was put to the vote, Germany, with Russia, refused to accept it and., as you know, declared that she could take no further part in the work of the Conference until the question of equality had been settled. For months, that remained the situation but the difficulty has now been solved. Germany returns to the Conference having accepted a satisfactory pledge that the question of equality will be dealt with. The situation, therefore, in these two essential aspects is brighter now than it was last July when the Conference adjourned:

So far, so good, for the political obstacles, but there are outstanding technical difficulties. Take" for instance, the question of chemical warfare. It is futile to destroy the weapons of the past if we ignore the armaments of the future. The next war, we are told, will be primarily technical. The combination to be feared most in the future will not be bullets and bayonets, but aircraft and gas, or aircraft and disease germs. Instead of the 'Charge of the Light Brigade,' we will have 'The Flight of the Gas Brigade.' There is a difficulty in limiting gas and bacteriological warfare. You may, of course, prohibit. It has been done and one of the results of the first session of the Conference was a drawing up of an agreement on such prohibition. But you cannot prevent a use of certain chemicals which are essential to our daily life, as dyes and drugs, photographic and other synthetic products which could be converted without much difficulty into poisonous gas. Indeed, our organic chemical factories are the arsenals of the future, but they are arsenals in disguise.

The picture becomes more sombre if you go a step further and determine the potential destructive effect of rays and subatomic energy. Scientists tell us that a drop of water contains sufficient of this subatomic energy to drive a touring car twenty-five miles an hour, continuously for twenty years. What will happen when science discovers how to release the energy and put it to destructive uses?

This seems remote and unreal. So did aircraft and tanks fifty years ago. If the peace enthusiasts, after the FrancoPrussian war, had told an audience that in the next war ships would fly through the air at two hundred miles an hour, that five hundred pound high explosive bombs would .be dropped from twenty-five thousand feet, or that a gun would fire thirty miles, he would have been marched off to a mental hospital.

There is another difficulty. It is the question of the private manufacture of arms. And at this point, may I stop a moment and pay tribute to your distinguished President who has done so much to bring this problem home to the Canadian people. There is no aspect of this Disarmament Conference which is of greater importance than that of the private manufacture of arms. There is no aspect in which the Canadian government is more deeply interested.

If all armament manufacturing were in the hands of governments, the problem of control would be relatively simple, but this is not the case and so we have our Shearers and our Zaharoffs, to whom war means increased dividends and increased profits for shareholders.

There is no use denying the evils attendant on the private manufacture of armaments. On the other hand, it is essential to see where the alternative, which is state manufacture" will lead us. With state manufacture permitted, you would have a situtation where the various armament producing countries would be in direct competition for the market of nonproducing countries. Every individual in the producing country would be the equivalent of a shareholder in the arsenal of the state. The success of the Government of the state in securing profitable armament orders would be domestic political success of the first order. This would hardly be a desirable state of affairs.

Look at the problem from the point of view of the nonindustrial state. When the purchase of armaments from industrial states was under consideration, the decisive factor would be the necessity of purchasing from a government, one not only friendly in times of peace but which could be relied on to be an active ally in times of war.

Under no circumstances could it be assumed that the uninterrupted sale of armaments from government to government could be counted upon. As a result of this situation, a system of political and military alliances would be practically forced upon the state engaged in this trade. Could anything be worse? Certain nonproducing states would seek the only way out of this dangerous situation and decide to establish their own government arsenals and as a result the manufacture of armaments would become more widely spread.

Again, the plants, being state-owned and operated and planned for war requirements, rather than those of peace, would become a much heavier charge against the national finances than if the equivalent of their output bad been purchased in a world market.

And there is another difficulty. It is impossible to separate industry into war and peace categories, except in respect to the manufacture of certain weapons like machine guns, heavy artillery and the larger shells. The chemical, optical; transportation and communication industries are as vital to peace as to war. Raw cotton can be converted into a summer frock or the propellent for a sixteen inch shell. A military rifle and a sporting shotgun, a bayonet or a carving knife, a tractor and a tank, have differences of only minor detail in the process of their manufacture, but the state could not take over their manufacture.

I point out these difficulties in the case of the abolition of the private manufacture of armaments, not because I believe that something should not be done about the problem, but to show that unless we are careful the cure might be worse than the disease. The truth is that the evils of the private manufacture of armaments can not be separated from the evils of state manufacture and both are connected with the evils of war itself.

Whether private manufacture of armaments is abolished or not it should be submitted to stringent measures of control and then publicity. These measures should be extended to state industry as well; otherwise a country like France, manufacturing eighty per cent of its armaments in state arsenals would be practically immune from international publicity and control, while the United Kingdom, which relies largely upon private manufacture, would have its hands completely tied.

I need not go further into the technical difficulties. They can be overcome if the political problems are solved;, but only then. I do feel, however, that the political atmosphere is better than it was last July. That is why I look forward to the forthcoming Conference, if not with enthusiasm, at least with hope.

Germany is back in the Conference. France is showing herself more accommodating on the question of security. The United States and Great Britain have both made practical disarmament proposals. More than this, the realization is spreading that the armament situation is a fundamental feature of the existing world political economic condition. It has been tied up to the depression and to the intergovernmental debts. This, I think, is all to the good.

You will not, I feel sure, expect a member of a government of any government-to show any enthusiasm for to the disarmament movement. After all" it is easier to refrain from spending when you have nothing to spend.

May I close by relating, if I can, this disarmament question to Canada. What has it got to do with us?

Thanks to happy accidents of geography and history, we have no need for armaments, except for police purexisting economic and financial difficulties, and yet, may I venture to suggest that those difficulties are an asset poses. No one would suggest that we cut down our land forces and I have never heard it whispered in those corridors of Geneva, where the real business of international conferences is carried on, that our navy is a menace to the peace of the world. In fact, I told them that we were ready to cut our navy in two if the other countries would do the same thing. (Laughter.)

But it is folly to imagine that what goes on at Geneva is of no particular concern of ours. It is--definitely and directly. In the first place, without some check of the growth of armaments, the world is going to find the road to economic recovery extremely difficult-not only because we are spending millions unproductively each year but also because armaments breed fear and distrust. This distrust and fear destroys international confidence and the delicately balanced economic and financial organization can never be restored to working order without the restoration of that confidence.

So there is a direct connection between the bayonets of Europe and the banks of Canada; between action at Geneva and unemployment in Ontario. But it is for us far more than a matter of dollars and cents. It is a matter of peace and war, of life and death. That may seem far-fetched but let me prove it.

I am convinced that without some form of disarmament the whole League system of outlawing war and peacefully settling disputes is in danger of collapse. I cannot conceive of the League of Nations surviving outbreaks in the Orient. I cannot conceive of it surviving failure to check that armament race which, as certain as night follows day, will result if the Geneva Conference collapses. We know the course of such a race. It is straight over the precipice and into the abyss of war.

But would the European armament race, with all its disastrous consequences, involve us? Well, Gentlemen, it is unnecessary to remind an Empire Club that we are a Dominion in the British Commonwealth of Nations. It is, I am sure, equally unnecessary to remind you that in the world of today there can be no longer isolation splendid or otherwise.

The clashing rivalries and rumbling discontents of Europe may seem a long way off, but since 1914, we have known that a shot fired in a Polish corridor is heard across the Peace River and -on Yonge and King Streets in Toronto.

As Sir George Perley so finely put it last February in Geneva: "Bitter experience has taught us in Canada that under present conditions we live in a world of interdependent states and fifty thousand Canadians who will forever sleep in European soil are silent witnesses to that fact."

So: Canada must play its part in this great effort to reduce armaments as a step on the road to world peace. To those of you-and T am through-who complain of the slowness of the progress made, may I cite, as my concluding words, a parable which I heard Mr. Ramsay MacDonald use in an address at Geneva? He spoke as follows

"We are all groaning under the slowness of the pace. So am I. I told you that the problems we have to face are not simple and they depend" not upon the good will of one nation but upon the good will of all nations.

"That reminds me of a story that was told in a sort of interpretation of the creation. The story is that when the powers in Heaven decided that earth was to be created and that the supreme end of creation was to be Man, a great hallelujah went up.

"The first days came and there was nothing but a separation of vague things-a kind of general resolution declaring a principle. There were some very worthy archangels who said, 'This is slow, very slow.'

"The second day came and the earth separated from the waters and then there was reference to an expert 'committee to see what would follow and the archangels said: 'This is no good. There is far too much compromise in this business for us.' The revolt spread and the discontented started a newspaper of their own and the third day and the fourth day and the fifth day came and by that time all those angels had become so impatient that on the fifth day there was a revolution and the rebels had to be bundled out. The imperturbable and indomitable powers of creation then wiped their brows and said: 'Create Man,' and man was created on the sixth day."

Do not get disappointed Gentlemen, because things go too slowly. We will go on as quickly as possible and the sixth day will come and on, that day we shall have accomplished work which will be recorded among the most illustrious in the pages of the history of the world.

I thank you. (Applause.)