WAR TO PREVENT WAR

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 168, 12 April 1935, Page 11

WAR TO PREVENT WAR

Fate of League of Nations Would Be Sealed DISSENT OF DOMINIONS (British Official Wireless.i Rugby, April lb. The Secretary of State for the Dominions, Mr. J. H. Thomas, was asked in the House of Commons whether any of the Dominions had at any time been consulted regarding the French proposal of March, 1933, for an international aerial police force for the purpose of preventing the misuse of civil aircraft. Mr. Thomas said that throughout (he course of the Disarmament Conference there had been constant consultations x\ith representatives of the Dominions on all aspects of the problem involved. So far as he was aware, no Dominion Government had made any official pronouncement on this particular proposal, but there had been published from time to time statements of the Dominions’ representatives indicating dissent from the conception of the League of Nations as an organisation with an armed force of its own-. Answering a supplementary question, Mr. Thomas cited as a pronouncement of one of the Dominion representatives a speech of General Smuts in which he said: “If an attempt were made now to transform into a military machine the League of Nations to carry on war for preventing or ending war, I think its fate is sealed. 1 cannot conceive the Dominions remaining in such a League if it has to fight the wars of the Old World and, if the Dominions leave it. Great Britain is bound to follow.”