WORLD FUTURE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 110, 11 May 1936, Page 9

WORLD FUTURE.

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS. PURPOSE OF SANCTIONS. (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, Sunday. The future of the world lies in upholding the principles of the Covenant of the League of Nations, said Mr. H. Duncan Hall, a member of the Secretariat of the League., who is now visiting Wellington. The very survival of the British Commonwealth, said Mr. Hall, depended upon the establishment of an effective collective system as the dominant force in world polities. Asked whether he thought sanction? were likely to be dropped or continued, Mr. Hall said it was impossible to foresee what decision would be made by the League. "The reasons tor the imposition of sanctions have not changed," he continued. "The present policy of the League is a clear policy. The purpose of sanctions must not be forgotten. That purpose is not punitive in nature. It is an effort to restore peace and uphold the law, which has been broken. An act of war has been committed under the Covenant not merely against the victim State, but against all members of the League. Whatever may have happened in a military sense in Abyssinia does not alter the fact that such an act has been committed against the League. "The purpose of sanctions is to brins about • a just peace. It is of enormous importance to all countries which desire to live in peace that the League's strenuous efforts to see that aggression does not pay are made to succeed. If the lesson does not succeed —if it fails completely, or even if it is only partially successful—if it is an insufficient deterrent then the world will be faced with the practical certainty of a breakdown of peace. "While the future is dark and the challenge of violence in the world is a serious portent to the British Commonwealth, the Empire must look to the national defence of each unit and to the co-ordination of its defences as a whole. Above all, since without the assistance of other nations which have a similar interest in maintaining peace it cannot hope to survive as a Commonwealth, it must make a desperate effort to establish the collective system as the dominant force in vrorld politics."