The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo and The Sun MONDAY, JUNE 15, 1936. "REFORMING" THE LEAGUE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 140, 15 June 1936, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo and The Sun

MONDAY, JUNE 15, 1936. "REFORMING" THE LEAGUE.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the icrong that needs resistance For the future in the distance, And the good that tee can do.

The first, and major function of the League of Nations is to eliminate once and for all the fear of war. In exercising this function it has not succeeded, nor could it have been expected to succeed in less than twenty years in eliminating a fear that has been deeprooted in mankind for hundreds of years. The League's latest failure, both to prevent the Italian attack 011 Ethiopia and to stop it after it had begun, has naturally strengthened the opinion of many people who believe that the Covenant should be amended or "reformed," in the light of experience and of present-day 1 realities. There is undoubtedly much force in this contention, but those who adopt the view that only a reform, great or small, of the League's Covenant and machinery is needed to enable it to function effectually will deceive themselves. "The League" is "the States which are members of the League"; its effectiveness depends at any time upon the extent to which they are prepared to co-operate. If they co-operate to the utmost, then faulty machinery will not prevent them from achieving their objective; if they fail to co-operate, then 110 machinery, however perfect, will prevent a failure that will be written down as "the League's failure." The degree of co-operation among members of the League depends ultimately upon the state of public opinion in the member countries. To-day public opinion in most countries pays lip-service to the ideal of peace, but assents to and often strongly supports large-scale and intensive preparations for war. It has no difficulty in justifying these preparations; indeed, in any one country, it would be difficult to deny that they are urgently necessary. National self-interest is felt to be at stake. Contrast this public support of preparations for war with the incomplete and wavering support given to the efforts of the League —and reflected in the efforts of the League— 1 -to stopJtalian aggression in Ethiopia. Except, perhaps, in England, only a minority of people in each country felt that the principle for which the League stood was intimately related to their nation's selfinterest. In short, they declined to take risks in the cause of peace. ' It is significant and paradoxical that the plan for the reform of the League which has been drawn up by the chairman of the Committee of Thirteen (which is the League Council minus Italy) should include a proposal to nullify Article 16 (the "sanctions" article) of the Covenant. The proposal appears as a confession not only of failure but of despair. Before the Ethiopian war the League was criticised as a "talking assembly;" but the sanctions campaign proved that it is something more than that. If all its "teeth" are to be drawn, the criticism is likely to be fully justified. On the other hand, if' there is no hope, under the existing Covenant, of widening the League's membership or of securing unanimity for the vigorous use of the weapons it now possesses, those weapons had better .be removed.