FUTURE OF THE LEAGUE

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22308, 24 January 1938, Page 10

FUTURE OF THE LEAGUE

Forces Intent on Destruction "BATTLE ROYAL AT GENEVA" Outcome of Crisis Not Yet Known "The League of Nations is now the object of a direct diplomatic offensive. It is clear that certain forces are out to destroy it. One may ask why this is so. I think the answer is that the League, in spite of its manifest defects, is still a rallying ground for the forces of peace and a major obstacle in the path of aggression." In these words, Mr J. V. Wilson, the chief of the central section of the League of Nations Secretariat, discussed yesterday with a reporter the crisis the League was now facing—a crisis the result of which could not yet be determined, and which must vitally affect the League's future. Those who cared for the purposes of the League of Nations were forced now to take stock of the situation, he said. Did they want the League to continue to exist? If so, what kind of League would be best adapted to present conditions? "The impression one gets at Geneva," said Mr Wilson, "is that the answer to the first question is still in the affirmative. Not only would the disappearance of the League involve something like a diplomatic revolution, so deeply is it rooted in modern international life, but once destroyed its resurrection would be virtually impossible until mankind were once again ready to make political experiments on the grand scale—which seems only to happen after a great war. "A Battle Royal" "On the second question—the form of the League's future—a battle royal rages at Geneva between those who think that the League should exist merely for cooperation and consultation and those who consider that it should also, as under the present Covenant, be regarded as a system for the potential mutual defence of its members. "It cannot yet be said which viewwill prevail," Mr Wilson continued. "But the harsh lessons of the last few years show that to maintain the second kind of League members must be prepared to take more risks on behalf of the Covenant than hitherto.

"Next Thursday the hundredth session of the Council of the League is to meet. Anyone who studies the work of those 99 sessions which precede it cannot but be impressed with the useful contribution which has been made to the solution of numerous international problems, political and nonpolitical. "However, most people will still regard the question of what can be done to prevent war as the great test of the League, a test which becomes more searching now that in many quarters it is no longer necessary to pay even lip service to the cause of peace and the ideals of the League. "The great lesson of the League's history is that' nations can only expect to get out of it in the way of protection roughly what they themselves are prepared to put into it for the protection of others," he concluded.