The Press Saturday, February 15, 1930. The League's First Ten Years.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19854, 15 February 1930, Page 14

The Press Saturday, February 15, 1930. The League's First Ten Years.

Writing in the January number of the Fortnightly Review Mr Hugh F. Spender draws attention to an anniversary which perhaps received less than its due recognition on January 10th in the Dominion, the tenth anniversary of the League of Nations; and he shows with impartial skill the development of an experiment which has established the influence of the League as an agency for international reconstruction in politics. Mr Spender's impartiality appears in his emphasis on the League's failures, both to recognise all that was involved in its existence and to fulfil its defined functions, and in his refusal to claim for the League the credit for action taken by Powers independently of it; and this makes his account of its advance in collective 1 wisdom and power all the more persuasive. The League's first setback immediately followed its constitution by the Peace Treaty. The first meeting of the Council was summoned, a week after the Treaty came into force, by President Wilson; but he did not attend. The United States had refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles and to enter the League created by Wilson, and the early meetings of Council and Assembly were held in an atmosphere of resignation to their futility. To the French above all it seemed that the League without America was a L?aguo hopelessly enfeebled, for their faith in its utility had been tied to their hope of a joint .guarantee of security from the United States and Great Britain. Faith fell with hope, and French policy sought the practical advantage of military alliances and material guarantees, notably in the occupation of the Ruhr. It was little wonder, therefore, that the League at first hovered more or less ineffectually outside the rough-and-tumble of large affairs. It settled the small but still important business of Finland and the Aaland Islands; but the quarrel between Albania and Jugoslavia was settled, not by the League but through the League, which voiced the decision of the Ambassadors' Conference of the victorious Powers. Again, when the Polish General Zeligowski defied the Treaty of Suwalki and occnpied Vilna, the League was helpless and has, in fact, remained helpless ever since to compose the differences between Poland and Lithuania. "If war has been avoided," says Mr Spender, "it is simply because 11 Lithuania has been unable to hit " back." Again, the delimitation of the Upper Silesian frontier between Germany and Poland was dictated by the Supreme Council of the Allies without reference to the League and has the' defects of the arbitrary method: "No " one could call it a fair settlement; " for the plebiscite gave. Germany im- " portant industrial districts . which "were subsequently taken from her on " one excuse or another." This was the period of what has been called the War after the War, one of such difficulty that we may almost marvel at the League's surviving at all. Mr Spender says: Until the Treaty of Locarno, if any question . affecting territorial adjustments came before the League, the defeated Powers stood a small chance of obtaining an impartial hearing. The shadow of the Supreme Council and the Ambassadors' Conference with its undefined powers hung over the proceedings of the League during this time.

But it did more than survive, of coarse; it grew stronger, not merely because wartime passions and the wilful spirit of victory were naturally subsiding, bnt because it more confidently asserted against them the spirit of the new Covenant. This was the real victory of the League, which is not much dimmed by its failures, even by so disturbing a failure as it was unable to avoid in the Italo-Greek dispute. The Italian Government, in bombarding and seizing Corfu, acted as if the League did not exist and appealed over its head to the Ambassadors' Conference; but the League, though ignored, snatched from its discomfiture one . advantage, the decision of a Committee of International Jurists that the Council's right to intervene in such disputes was clear. This, and the evident fact that the Council and the Permanent Court had successfully dealt with minor disputes, helped to dispose Europe to accept the new procedure. In the economic field the League's success had been less, chequered. Austria was rescued from collapse, and Hungary's finances were stabilised. In Greece and Bulgaria the problem of settling hosts of refugees was capably solved. The social and humanitarian ; work of Europe has been stimulated ! and controlled by the League with such | success as would otherwise have been impossible. If it hds shocked the world with its report on the white slave traffic, it is because, till how, there has been no body so well, equipped to explore and reveal the international ramifications of evil and to undertake the battle against it. The same words apply with little change to the League's fight against the illicit drug traffic. Pour or five years ago, when Germany entered the League and the Locarno Treaty was signed, the League had to prove the strength which it had seemed to attain. Locarno drew- the French away from the policy of force, to which the Protocol of 1924 would have committed the League itself, and, by a special guarantee of the security of their Eastern frontiers, engaged their sympathies with the general policy

of conciliation. These sympathies were not strong enough to promote any enthusiasm for disarmament; but the fact that one great anxiety was partly appeased led France to enter more confidently and willingly the conferences of a League which for the first time, with the inclusion of Germany, assumed unmistakably its real character. The Dawes Plan relaxed the tension over "reparations; and the five diplomats whose hands could make or break the future of the League began to meet often, with growing confidence in each other, and with growing confidence in the value of the work they had undertaken. They were, of course, Sir Austen Chamberlain, Briand, Stresemann, Hymans, and Adatchi. There were complaints that the League had surrendered its power into the hands of a small group, the " hotel diplomats "; but no period in its history was more fruitful of good, and no other method could have been so fruitful as that which made colleagues of these five. There were obstacles, certainly; but if the " spirit of Locarno " was not as powerfully influential as had been expected, Stresemann, with a statesman's wisdom, accommodated himself and his country's wishes to the slower pace which was still the pace of progress. The reward of this patience and of the steadily closer understanding between him and Briand was the decision to evacuate the Rhineland and the revision of the Dawes Plan by the Young Committee —triumphs to which Stresemann's life was sacrificed.

The summary need not go beyond this stage to the Kellogg Pact and its consequences in the new effort to achieve disarmament, or some measure of it, on the strength of this all-round i-e----nunciation of war as an " instrument of " national policy." The movement for peace has been mightily accelerated, by the gradual perfection of the machinery of discussion but even more by the strengthening of popular desire to have it and to sacrifice much for it. The London Conference is a test of both.