The Indivisibility of Peace and the Inseparability of East and West

Abstract

THERE exists in the world today the paradox of a passionate desire for peace in the very nations that are the most aggressive. In view of this paradox we must be realistic enough to admit that policies aiming at the establishment of peace by collective agreements between nations are limited in their effectiveness, because they cannot fully control or change the explosive conditions which, within individual nations, make for aggression and the danger of war. Could international agreements in the Pacific region, for instance, change the conditions which, within Japan, tend to generate policies of expansion? Certainly not. In this respect we can only hope for an amelioration of internal conditions, especially in favor of the peasants, whose relatively inefficient economy and archaic social system, underlying Japan's modern and vigorous industrial structure, make the nation as a whole unstable. So far as economic adjustments are concerned, we must remain on economic grounds and face the fact that the population of Japan has increased rapidly in the past 70 years, and will continue to increase for some time; and also the fact that standards of living differ between East and West. This, however, need not prevent us from realizing that the internal situation in Japan could be ameliorated under two conditions: a general return to policies of disarmament, among all nations, and the holding of an inclusive economic conference, as suggested in London in I933, to study the production and distribution of goods throughout the world. This would leave the way open for Japan itself to apply the profits of its trade expansion toward reducing the discrepancies between its rural economy and its industrial economy, instead of spending them on its army and navy. We must deal first, however, with certain general concepts, in order to establish a realistic vindication of the ideal of collective security. The indivisibility of peace is the first of these concepts, and from it there follows, as a logical conclusion, a second concept: that of the inseparability of East and West. We can, in fact, no longer talk in terms of a Far Eastern Question and a European Question. Asia, Europe, Africa and