During the whole of the year of grace 1937 the more highly educated portions of the human race have been arming upon a scale never before imagined. All the preparations of the years before the outbreak of the Great War were upon a petty scale compared to this. Not only has the expense in service and in money been vastly greater, and the weapons all far more deadly, but arrangements are made in all so-called civilised countries to bring the whole population into the national war effort and to expose both sexes, all classes, aged and young, weak, sick and wounded impartially, to the flail and torment of destruction.
At the same time, the mass of every nation in the world is earnestly desirous of peace, and asks very little but to live in it, and enjoy the ever-ripening fruit of their labours which science can bring. Those that dwell under totalitarian dictatorships are gripped by an all-pervading apparatus of propaganda and compulsion which welds them into a State machine primarily adapted to war. The liberal and Parliamentary countries have had in their turn to arm upon an enormous scale in self-defence, and seek in a tentative and as yet imperfect manner to join themselves together for mutual protection and insurance. The cost of warlike preparation has thrown the finances of the dictatorship governments into a condition which is leaving ordinary bankruptcy far behind, and which compels them to enforce privations and discipline upon their peoples which hitherto have been tolerated only in times of war. The modern world is taking the aspect of a series of feudal fortresses victualled for a siege. Such have been the dominant tendencies of the year 1937, and such is the strange panorama which unfolds before our eyes at this Christmastide.
The events of the year have corresponded to the forces which have been at work. The Civil War in Spain has been fought feebly but cruelly and incessantly throughout the year. The strength of the Spanish Nationalist and monarchical forces has increasingly gained upon the Republican and Left-wing elements. This Spanish quarrel has been taken up by the Dictatorships of both extremes who have sought to transform it into an ideological contest between Nazism and Communism. While promising solemnly and repeatedly not to intervene, the German and Italian Dictators have thrown their weight in on one side, while the Soviet Czar has done his utmost to help the other. France has been neutral and Great Britain strictly neutral. The British Government and Foreign Secretary deserve applause for the patience and good faith with which they have acted, and it may well be that when this bitter struggle ends, Great Britain will not be found to be the most unpopular or uninfluential Power in Spain.
The secret military societies which control the Government of Japan having virtually suppressed its Parliament, and murdered politicians who were thought to be lukewarm in their patriotism, have led their people into an invasion of China marked by ruthlessness and frightfulness on the latest models. The Japanese are now deeply involved in China, and no one can tell how far this adventure may carry them. The Chinese have defended their country as well as they could, and a new spirit of unity and patriotism is alive in the hearts of the Chinese race, the most numerous in all the world. The Japanese onslaught upon China has been marked by a succession of outrages against neutral powers, particularly Great Britain and the United States, followed in all cases by apologies. So far these apologies have had to be accepted, but it may be that further injuries are in store and that little else than the destruction of British, United States and European interests in the Far East may be in contemplation.
Signor Mussolini's conquest of Abyssinia has weighed heavily upon the Italian people. The whole of that wild mountainous region is seething with sporadic rebellion, and the maintenance of an Italian army of several hundred thousand men amid a hostile population has become a serious drain upon the Italian resources of all kinds. The Italian dictator, having also sent a considerable army to Spain and another even larger to Libya, has certainly spread his resources widely. At the same time he is fortifying his ports in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea with feverish zeal. The cost of these excursions and exertions, together with the immense host of uniformed functionaries and military establishments associated with Dictatorships, have thrown a burden upon the Italian peasants, artisans, and mercantile classes which they bear with astonishing docility and increasing strain.
The embarrassments or the ambitions of the Dictator Powers have led Germany, Italy, and Japan to form a triangle of authoritarian and militaristic governments nominally to resist Communism, of which they profess to stand in great dread. Such a combination is fraught with danger not only to the soil of Russia but to the prosperity and freedom of Parliamentary democracies alike in the Old World and the New. It is fortunate therefore in these circumstances, and quite natural, that the British Empire and the French Republic should draw ever closer together. The British Navy even at present is far stronger relatively to European fleets than in 1914. The programmes now in rapid construction will emphasise this reassuring fact. The French Army has not yet been surpassed in the numbers of formed divisions by the Germans, and its formations are of full maturity. The combination of the British fleet and the French army in resistance to any violent or unprovoked aggression should give confidence to the secondary or small Powers of Europe to hold firmly to the Covenant of the League of Nations, and to make the greatest contribution they can to their own safety. Under the usual appearance of party and Parliamentary bickerings there is a greater measure of unity upon essentials in the French and British nations than has ever been known in time of peace. Finally, the goodwill extended towards the free Governments of Europe by the United States has become more apparent as the months have passed.
There is therefore no need for us to feel unequal to the stresses of 1938, and we must all try to use that year so as to bring about a healthier atmosphere and a more easy and sane situation. Let me, then, close with a thought which may appeal to all.
On Christmas Day, 1914, the German soldiers on the Western Front ceased firing. They placed small Christmas trees on their trenches and declared that on this day there should be peace and goodwill among suffering men. Both sides came out of their trenches and met in the blasted No-Man's Land. They clasped each other's hands, they exchanged gifts and kind words. Together they buried the dead hitherto inaccessible and deprived of the rites which raise man above the brute. Let no man worthy of human stature banish this inspiration from his mind.
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