LEAGUE FOR PEACE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 296, 14 December 1936, Page 11

LEAGUE FOR PEACE.

EXECUTIVE RESOLUTIONS REPORT

The usual meeting of the Women's International League for Peace and 'Freedom was held at the Fabian Club last week, Mrs. Pickett presiding. In connection with the people's mandate, news was received that on September 20 a delegation of members of the league was received by M. Saavedra Lamas, President of the Assembly of the League of Nations. The delegation handed him the Golden Book containing signatures and endorsements of the people's mandate representing 10,000,000 persons, and this without counting the support of five big international organisations yet to come in, the report continued, and expected to number 3,000,000 names. M. Lamas received the delegation very courteously and assured them the League of Nations would not abandon its work for the construction of peace, and emphasised the importance of the Women's Peace Movement. It was decided to continue circulating the mandate for six months longer.

The minutes of the meeting of the international executive held at Geneva last September were read and the resolutions passed there endorsed by the meeting. They included one regretting the present tragic upheaval in Spain against a Government legally elected by the people—the league deploring the fact that the non-intervention committee had been soi dilatory and ineffective. Another resolution deeply deplored the failure of the League of Nations to deal adequately with the crises of the last few years, no reform being possible unless the members rose to the level of a truly international outlook and so regained the confidence of the peoples of the world." An urgent request was made to the Assembly to consider the position of Ethiopia from the point of view of international law, and submit the whole question to the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague. Protests were made against the arbitrary measures and severe treatment meted out by the Greek Government to persons against whom no accusation had been brought and whose only crime was their democratic beliefs. A fifth resolution congratulated the French Government on its gesture of amnestv towards the political prisoners in Indo-China, and wished all colonial Powers would act in the same manner.

The news that Carl von Ossietsky had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1936 was received with much satisfaction, Jane Addams, the late international president having -been the first to nominate von Ossietsky for the prize —a movement that was promptly followed up by the New Zealand and all the national sections. The award had already resulted in the prisoner being removed from the concentration camp to the hospital, where he is still seriously ill-