THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS: Assembly's Week

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The Fifth Assembly of The League of Nations (TIME, Sept. 8) heard two speeches on security and disarmament. One was from the lips of Premier Ramsay MacDonald of Britain. The other was from Premier Eduard Her riot of France.

The contents of the speeches may be summed up philosophically in the words of Blaise Pascal, famed 17th Century mathematician and Cartesian philosopher par excellence: "Justice without Power is futility. Power without Justice is tyranny."

Premier MacDonald took the contra stand on the first part of Pascal's aphorism. The gist of his speech went to support the thesis that Justice without Power is security. He pleaded for arbitration among nations based upon Right and Justice and not upon Might. He agreed that "Power without Justice is tyranny," but, losing himself in abstruse idealism, he wanted the annihilation of power by disarmament and the extirpation of tyranny by arbitration. Said he: "Our position in this: We don't believe a military alliance is go ing to bring security. We believe a military alliance in an agreement for security, like the mustard seed, is small to begin with; and that this seed with the years will grow and grow, until at last the tree produced from it will overshadow the whole heavens; and we shall be back exactly at the military position at which we found ourselves in 1914.

This did not suit Premier Herriot. In theory he agreed with his British colleague, but in practice he accepted Pascal's famous pensée with a single addition: "Justice with power is security" — meaning that arbitration backed by force was the only guarantee of security that would be accepted by France. Said he: "Arbitration is necessary, but arbitration is not sufficient. Arbitration, security, disarmament— those are three things inseparable. We must create something more than an abstract form of words. Arbitration shows good faith, but we must protect good faith. We must protect those states which show their good faith by accepting arbitration. When a nation has given an example by accepting freely and voluntarily the principle that all its disputes shall be dealt with by arbitration, then, whatever the size of that state, large or small, it has the right to security and the right to justice.

"Mr. MacDonald says arbitration is justice without passion. I agree. But you cannot have justice without some force behind it. We must combine right and might. We must make what is mighty, just; and what is just, mighty. If we are to give to people what they desire, if we are to save them a repeti tion of their sufferings, we have got to provide for their security."

Premier Herriot was backed by all the small states of Europe. All thought that Premier MacDonald had put the cart before the horse—that is, that he had laid the emphasis upon arbitration and disarmament when it ought to have been on security.

The day following Premier Herriot's speech the Assembly passed unanimously, amid tremendous enthusiasm, a resolution which said, in effect:

"The Assembly, noting the declarations of the Governments represented, remarks with satisfaction that they contain a basis of understanding tending to establish and secure peace; and it decides as follows: