LEAGUE AIMS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 114, 15 May 1936, Page 7

LEAGUE AIMS.

LOYAL SUPPORT. Covenant Still Steadfast Policy of Britain. NEED OF REFORM ADMITTED. British Official "Wireless. (Received 1.30 p.m.) RUGBY, Slay 14. The Prime Minister, Mr. Baldwin, devoted to foreign affairs the principal parts of the speech he delivered to a gathering of Conservative women in the Albert Hall. He stated: "I am not a dictator. I have to rely on reason." Mr. Baldwin went 011 to comment that one thing which would strike the historian of the future was that wherever one found in the world to-day the greatest measure of constitutional stability there was found the most complete freedom of criticism of Government. Turning to the anxieties of recent months and discussions in Parliament, and in the country generally on foreign affairs and the League of Nations, Mr. Baldwin said that for the iirst time there had been a clear appreciation of what League membership meant and involved. That in itself was a good thing. Reading the preamble of the League Covenant the Prime. Minister said: "Those objects are still the aim of our foreign policy, and if Europe is to be preserved then they must be the aim of the foreign policy of all nations, but the difficult question was to determine what were the best and most practical means of achieving sucTi aims.

"What I always saicl before this crisis I repeat now. If you find that an instrument will not do what you want it does not mean that what you desire is impossible of achievement. What it does mean is that you and all those who have used that instrument without success must sit down and examine the instrument, modify it, strengthen it, alter it, embody in it if you can such changes as will make it effective for your purpose. "I would say here that probably at the Assembly in the autumn League members will have to consider what, if any, changes are necessary in the League, and I hope that any changes that may be found helpful will induce those nations who are outside the League to come into it. If any such changes can be seen to be feasible, I hope then, indeed, they will be considered with all sincerity and with every desire to make the League at last, what it was hoped to be at the beginning, a universal League."