PEACE LEAGUE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 181, 2 August 1941, Page 6

PEACE LEAGUE

FOR DISARMAMENT POST-WAR GUARANTEES .By Air.) SAN FRANCISCO, July 26. Mr. Sumner Welles, acting-Secre-tary of State, stated in Washington that a post-war association of nations, strong enough to guarantee disarmament and equal economicopportunities, is the ideal for which •people of goodwill"' should strive as a foundation of permanent peace. In an address at a cornerstone laying of a new wing of the Norwegian Legation in Washington, Mr. Welles declared that free governments and peace-loving peoples should now be preparing for "the better day" that would come with "the crushing defeat of those who are sacrificing mankind to their own lust for power and for loot." His speech constituted the most specific pronouncement yet given by a high Administration official on the post-war aims ,of the American Government.

The League of Nations, as President Wilson conceived it, Mr. Welles said, "failed in part because of the blind selfishness of men here in the United States, as well as in other parts of the world." It failed also, he continued, "because of its utilisation by certain powers primarily to advance their own political and commercial ambitions."

But ho declared with emphasis that the League 'failed chiefly because of the fact that it was forced to operate, by those who dominated its councils, as a means of maintaining the status quo." "It was never enabled to operate," Mr. Welles said, "as its chief spokesman had intended—as an elastic and impartial instrument in bringing about peaceful and equitable adjustments between nations as time and circumstances proved necessary." He said that "some instrumentality must unquestionably be found to achieve such adjustments when the nations of the earth again undertake ! the task of restoring law and order to a disastrously shaken world." Whatever the mechanism, Mr. Welles said he is "unalterably convinced" of two things: "First, that the abolition of offensive armaments and the limitation and reduction of defensive armaments and of the tools which make the construction of such armaments possible, can only be undertaken through some rigid form of international supervision. Secondly, the natural rights of all peoples would have to be insured under a lasting peace basis."