“LEAGUE MUST BE RESTORED”

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22358, 23 March 1938, Page 7

“LEAGUE MUST BE RESTORED”

SURVEY OF EUROPEAN SITUATION

MISS K. COURTNEY’S ADDRESS

“I suggest we have reached the present dangerous state in international affairs because we have failed to make the League of Nations function,” said Miss K. Courtney, secretary of the Women’s Peace Committee at Geneva, in a public address at the Latimer Hall last evening. “We have failed to operate the fire engine when it was called to a fire, but I suggest that we may yet do so. I suggest that the only hope is to endeavour to restore that system of international co-operation which was set up at the end of the war.”

Miss Courtney reviewed international events since 1931, leading to the difficulties of the moment. Sh. suggested that the immediate cause of the tremendous deterioration in international affairs was the breakdown in the application of the covenant,of the League when Italy invaded Abyssinia. A few years further back, also, in 1931, Japan violated the covenant in her attack upon Manchuria, and was allowed to get away with it. “Major Tragedy”

The Disarmament Conference, of which so much had been hoped, opened to the accompaniment of gunfire at Shanghai and became the major tragedy of post-war years. Its failure was due to two problems—Germany’s demand for equality of status, and the French demand for security. Germany was not granted equality, and immediately left the League and achieved equality in defiance of it.It was rather the fashion. Miss Courtney said, among British people to blame France because of her insistent demands for security, but there were French people living who had seen their country twice invaded by Germany, and it was essential to understand their point of view. When Germanv rearmed, France made treaties with countries neighbouring Germany in pursuance of a policy which Germans described as encirclement. France finally achieved an agreement with Italy, and though the terms were not published, it was very likely that France agreed to look with a blind eye upon events in Abyssinia. Then came Sir Samuel Hoare’s great speech in the League Assembly, in which he declared that Britain would stand firmly by the League and all its covenants. This was what France had been waiting to hear ever since 1919. The League applied sanctions against Italy and they were successful, a fact which people were apt to forget. The trouble was that those sanctions did not curb certain important items, such as oil, and Italy went on to victory in the face of the League. The sanctions had then to be withdrawn and defeat admitted. This breakdown had many serious consequences. The smaller States lost confidence in the League, and the bigger ones realised that they could defy it. The Spanish conflict, an international war. was one result. Austria’s Dilemma

Austria had been the buffer State between two dictatorships, in Italy and Germany. As long as the two were more or less equally strong Austria

was able, to maintain a precarious independence, but the balance had now failed. Mussolini was too weak to oppose Hitler, because of forces he had spent in Abyssinia and in Spain, and because financially Italy was unsound. Mussolini could not like having Germany as a neighbour. There was a part of the southern Tyrol which Italy had received after the war, and which contained Austrian people who were restive under Italian rule. _■ Hitler’s desire was to incorporate in the Third Reich all those people whom he was disposed to call Germans. He was determined to extend eastward, where the corn and oil of Rumania enticed him. Mussolini had dreams of another Roman Empire, and it might not ,be entirely because of* his weakness but also because of an understanding with Hitler that he did not interfere in Austria. Mussolini had designs upon the Mediterranean as his Empire, herice his interest in Spam. The question was naturally asked. “What are we to do about it?” The answer as she saw it’ was an endeavour to revive the spirit of co-opera-tion on which the League was founded. The only alternative, armament to defend peace. ■ seemed bound to end in explosion and war. A tremendous effort must be made to restore the League. * , . . Miss Courtney was accorded a vote of thanks for her address which, was given under the auspices of the Christchurch branch of the League of Nations Union. Dr. R.'R. D. Milligan, chairman of the branch, presided.