LEAGUE COVENANT

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 118, 21 May 1928, Page 9

LEAGUE COVENANT

KELLOGG DECLARATION SMUTS ON MUTUAL EFFECT Australian Press Association. CAPETOWN, 19th May. General Smuts has made an important suggestion on the Kellogg declaration. He regards it as reinforcing the League Covenant and believes that it will only function successfully in conjunction with the Covenant, but to be reasonably, reliable it'ought to be followed up by an additional undertaking more or less oiv^tho lines of Article 16 of the Covenant, or ought to be looked upon as a supplement to the League which is based on the economic sanction of that article. He said that with the support of the United States behind this economic sanction the prospect of future'peace on the double basis of the Covenant and the declaration became far brighter and more stable. A complementary declaration with the enthusiastic backing of America may well mean the rescue of the League from becoming the special coucern and almost private, property of any particular group of Powers. PACT AS "UMBRELLA." , General Smuts'points out that special defensive groups have arisen in Europe not harmonising with the spirit of the League and involving war obligations. The Locarno system might in (the last resort mean war and war obligations on its members, and it was against these pacts and this system that the outlawry of war under declaration bumped violently. ,Away out of this would be to make all signatories not only of Locarno but of other defensive pacts parties to the declaration. The Locarno and other pacts must necessarily strtnd, but they would all be covered with the umbrella of the declaration. The effect then would be that if the declaration were violated by an arbitrary aggressor the defenders would still be able to fall back to the Locarno and other pacts as their second line of defence, but it was quite possible the umbrella might prove effective'against the storm safeguarding the peace of Central Europe even more effectively than the patched-up arrangements of the last ten years. In that,way Locarno would also prove to be but a step towards ultimate peace. . VAIN WITHOUT RUSSIA. General Smuts urges that it is vain to organise for world.peace and leave out, Eussia. With all Central and Eastern Europe and Russia in the League or declaration, or both, the disarmament movement would enter an 'entirely new and most promising phase. He added that if diplomatic correspondence failed to bring about unanimity let America call a conference of the Powers concerned. '