So long as peace is not attained by law (so argue the advocates of armaments) the military protection of a country must not be undermined, and until such is the case disarmament is impossible.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Disarmament or limitation of armaments, which depends on the progress made on security, also contributes to the maintenance of peace.
Even a total and universal disarmament does not guarantee the maintenance of peace.
When distrust exists between governments, when there is a danger of war, they will not be willing to disarm even when logic indicates that disarmament would not affect military security at all.
The relationship of the two problems is rather the reverse. To a great extent disarmament is dependent on guarantees of peace. Security comes first and disarmament second.
Thus, if armaments were curtailed without a secure peace and all countries disarmed proportionately, military security would have been in no way affected.
I know that military alliances and armament have been the reliance for peace for centuries, but they do not produce peace; and when war comes, as it inevitably does under such conditions, these armaments and alliances but intensify and broaden the conflict.
It has become impossible to give up the enterprise of disarmament without abandoning the whole great adventure of building up a collective peace system.
If the history of the past fifty years teaches us anything, it is that peace does not follow disarmament - disarmament follows peace.
To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war.
The popular, and one may say naive, idea is that peace can be secured by disarmament and that disarmament must therefore precede the attainment of absolute security and lasting peace.