2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 203not for very long deter war in a situation in which international condi-
tions were highly volatile.^405
Addressing the disillusionment that all felt in light of the disrepute
into which ‘the noble concept of moral and material sanctions’ had
fallen, Dulles stated that peace required a counterpart to sanctions in
the form of mechanisms capable of responding to ‘the needs of chang-
ing social justice.’^406 He acknowledged that such an approach would
demand ‘real sacrifice’ in the form of sharing in ‘what we now possess for
ourselves alone,’ by which he largely meant that there should be a real-
location of economic resources.^407 Dulles stated that although the possi-
bilities of peaceful change in the form of territorial concessions ‘should
not be ignored’ and that such concessions might ‘expedient to tide
over immediate emergencies,’ their ‘the ultimate effect may be merely
to magnify the efficacy of the system of potential force.’^408 Dulles con-
cluded his speech in stating that if world leaders assembled in Paris in
1919 had ‘failed by creating sanctions without change,’ the current gen-
eration of leaders should not ‘fail by creating change without sanctions.’
Although ending his speech with a statement that might suggest that
he took the view that at that point in time a policy of collective security
should have priority over that of peaceful change, it needs to be empha-
sised that the key message conveyed by Dulles’s speech was as follows:
the elimination of force will have a ‘sound moral basis’ and force will be
‘deprived of some moral sanction’ only if those enjoying ‘great natural
advantages’ abandoned their efforts to ‘perpetuate for all time a monop-
oly of advantage.’^409
Clarification as to the intent behind Dulles’s speech, which mostly
was of a general nature, might be found in an article Dulles penned for
the Atlantic Monthly just under two years earlier. Dulles commenced the
article by noting that despite the assurances that accompanied such dip-
lomatic feats as the covenant, the Washington Naval Treaty, the Locarno
Treaties, the Pact of Paris and the doctrine of ‘nonrecognition of the
fruits of aggression’ that the world was on the path to peace, the current
(^405) Ibid.
(^406) Ibid., 614, 616.
(^407) Ibid., 614.
(^408) Ibid., 615–16.
(^409) Ibid., 614–16.