Navy League and League of Nations

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 49, 21 November 1932, Page 11

Navy League and League of Nations

Sir, —On reading your report of the discussion in the Wellington Education Board one could not help feeling that some of 3 our educationists are prone to let their in- ? sularity run away with them. It is not •> clear to me why it should be necessary for > members of an education board in discus- ?■ sing the advisability of allowing Navy • League lectures into the public schools to depreciate the League of Nations. To me the functions of the Navy and the League of Nations are so distinct, and, iu present circumstances, both so necessary that little is gained by measuring one against the other. Because the League of Nations has not succeeded in any large measure in reducing the armaments of all nations, it would be dangerous for any one nation wholly to disarm; but that is not sufficient reason for an attack on the league itself. It is. rather a call for the enlistment of public opinion on the side of the League which can act with effect only in so far as the organised opinion is at its back. The confessions of military authorities that there is absolutely no effective defence for a great city against aerial warfare would, in a rational world, in itself, be sufficient to make the establishment of the league on a firm basis the chief object of the public authorities of every nation; and the mere faet that at the present time the assemblies of the league arc attended by the Prime Minister or Foreign Minister of every member Power of importance, and are watched with interest by the observers of all other Powers makes it not wholly unreasonable that it should be housed in a building at least as dignified as that housing the legislature of a Dominion with less than two million inhabitants. Quite apart, however, from the possible influence of the league on questions of war and peace, economists of every shade of opinion are agreed that without international co-operation it will be impossible once again to raise the level of prices and provide markets for the-ever-increas-ing productivity of modem factories and farms; and if to-day the League of Nations is not strong enough to organise the . necessary international co-operation, the , blame must lie with those who do not ( realise that whether we like it or not, trade, industry, and finance have become international, and that the old idea of a selfcontained nation is gone forever. However important a navy may be—and few would denv its importance—it still remains true that the policy of national isolation is suicidal, and that there is in existence onlv one body, the League of Nations, which is capable .of supplying the fatal defect in the world’s trade organisation. To the side of this organisation all men of reason and goodwill should rally, and in a world that is suffering from the following of ideals of rielf-sufficiency,, that have ceased to apply to actual arcumstances, it is at least deplorable that those entrusted with the formation of the mental outlook of our children should be so shortsighted and insular.—l am. etc.. W. J. McELDOWNEY. Wellington. November 18.