The Dominion FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1926. A STEP TOWARDS PEACE

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 296, 10 September 1926, Page 8

The Dominion FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1926. A STEP TOWARDS PEACE

The admittance of Germany to full membership of the League of Nations, with a seat on the Council, may be described, without sentimental exaggeration, as a long step towards international concord. So long as Germany was treated as a pariah nation she was liable to adopt a policy of reprisal, and quite conceivably, might have been manoeuvred into undesirable alliances beyond the influence of the League. . Whatever may have been conjectured concerning her future aspirations, the fact to be faced was that international stability was more secure with Germany in the League than out of it. That she has been elected to membership with every manifestation of unanimity and good will is a significant indication of the trend of international political feeling since the disappointing meeting of the League in March last. In a previous article on the subject, emphasis was given to the example in international good manners displayed by Sweden at previous meetings of the League Assembly. From the reports of this latest —and most crucial —meeting, it would appear that the Scandinavian representatives worthily sustained their previous role, and contributed in no small measure to the decision ultimately reached that Germany should be accorded full status. It must have been an impressive scene, as nation after nation, by the vote of its representatives, extended the hand of good-fellowship to Germany, and by that act, it may be hoped, advanced materially the cause of world peace. The effect of the League’s decision should be a corresponding impulse to the international policy of the United States. America has all along declared for a policy of aloofness. until Europe supplied convincing evidence of a unanimous peace spirit. With Germany at last a member of an international peace organisation there is some reason for hoping that the United States will acknowledge the event with a corresponding modification of her previous attitude. The most significant fact of the present temper of the League is the return to the spirit of Locarno. For this felicitous turn of events due tribute has been accorded to the influence of British diplomacy, displayed by the persistent efforts of Sir Austen Chamberlain and Lord Cecil. As Germany’s late and , most powerful enemy in the late war, Britain’s disinterestedness in pressing the claims of that nation for admittance to the League is consistent with her traditional attitude to defeated peoples.

The League of Nations has after all survived its most acute crisis, and another step has been taken towards what it is hoped may prove to be an international peace organisation capable of effective action.