WORLD PEACE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 21, 25 January 1936, Page 12

WORLD PEACE.

WORK OF LEAGUE.

EFFICACY IS DEFENDED.

LATVIAN VISITOR'S VIEW.

Doubts about the efficacy of the League of Nations as a means of preventing war have been expressed at times, but Dr. Maurice Laserson, a native of Latvia, and a barrister and journalist, who has worked in Geneva for four years, in an address in Auckland painted a. more cheerful picture. He maintained that the League had- prevented some wars and had limited the spread of those which it could not prevent.

Having no sufficiently powerful means at its disposal of compelling members to honour the obligations which they had undertaken, it had not been able to prevent war between China and Japan, Bolivia and Paraguay, and Italy and Abyssinia., he' admitted, but it was not fair to blame the League as an institution for this, he maintained.

"In order to arrive at the final goal of a League of Nations, universal and allpowerful," said Dr. Laserson, "one should emphasise the positive -results already obtained, and not constantly lay stress on the setbacks. People should never forget that the League has succeeded in avoiding a number of armed conflicts, which threatened to turn into war; between Sweden and Finland in 1920, Rumania and Hungary in the same year, Poland and Lithuania in 3 920, Italy and Greece in 1923, and Greece and Bulgaria in 1925." Proof of Influence. The very existence and influence of the League were an important factor in international politics, Dr. Laserson said. If it were to disappear, it would be necessary to found another. The best proof of the influence of the mere existence of the League was furnished when King Alexander of Yugoslavia was murdered. The Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia, Dr. Benes, had acknowledged that it was due only to the existence of the League that war had been avoided. The Italo-Abyssinia dispute was the most severe test to which the League had been put and it had stood the test well. It had not been able to prevent war, but it had secured the localisation of the conflict and thus ensured world peace. Italy had done exactly what other Powers had done during the 19th century, but such action was wrong to-day because in the meantime the Covenant had been signed. The Covenant was the boundary between the past and present conception of war. For the League to provoke a worl+l war in an effort to stop the violation of the Covenant would lie criminal folly. It had bitter enemies in ideologists of war and manufacturers of arms.

"I am absolutely certain," Kaiil Dr. Lascrson, "that sooner or later there will come the historical moment when all the countries of the world will be members of the League and will take part in the supreme interest of safeguarding peace."