WAR AND PEACE AIMS

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22907, 2 January 1940, Page 6

WAR AND PEACE AIMS

The League's Attitude The attitude of the League of Nations to the various discussions of war aims and the terms of an eventual peace settlement are discussed in a recent Fortnightly News letter, issued by the Information Section. An; excerpt is printed below. Exponents of measures to be taken to ensure the reconstruction of the* world on a more stable basis from time to time make references to the League with special regard to what is described as its failure, for to a large number of people the outbreak of war appears to connote the breakdown of the system which the League was intended to maintain. Yet, when all these arguments are sifted, it will be found that, whatever may have been the defects in the working of the League, the Covenant itself stands clear and the main' principles embodied in it are again and again invoked when a picture of the latest post-war world is drawn by the disputants. One of the arguments which is exceedinglypopular at the moment draws attention to what is described as the need for either gradual or total abandonment of sovereignty by individual nations. It is suggested that the framers of the Covenant overlooked that important factor in cementing international co-operation. This is not historically correct, and it is curious that those ■who are disposed to dismiss the League as the product of an unwise idealism should now desire themselves to jump much further ahead than the framers of the Covenant in their realism considered it possible to go. If they in 1919 were convinced that an immediate abandonment of sovereignty could not be contemplated, how much more unlikely is such a condition to obtain to-day when, during the last few years, the spirit of nationalism has So rapidly grown? Moreover, there is no reason to suggest that the eventual and possibly gradual abandonment of sovereignty is incompatible with the Covenant of the League. Indeed, the logical development of collective security, had it been allowed to. continue in its course, would have brought about some such condition. The danger of present-day controversies seems to lie in a too enthusiastic condemnation of the wisdom and, indeed, the intelligence of those who framed the Covenant of the League. However much it may be agreed that the world eventually will have to return to the ordered path of international co-operation, success in avoiding the mistakes of the past will not be facilitated by exuberant condemnation of the statesmanship which had to handle the amazingly complex problems o£ 1919.