LEAGUE OF NATIONS

Evening Post, Issue 113, 10 November 1930, Page 3

LEAGUE OF NATIONS

SOME IMPRESSIONS.

IMPORTANT SUBJECTS

(From "T.e Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 3rd October.

Sir Thomas WiJford and Lady Wilford roLurncd from Geneva last ■ week in time to welcome to London the Prime Minister and his party. Mr. C. Knowles (the High Commissioner's private secretary) will remain until the end of the Assembly to represent New Zealand. Ho now has the Prime Minister's instructions as to how to vote should there be a division on the subject of amendments to the Covenant. "It was a most interesting and educativo experience," said Sir Thomas, describing his first impressions of the Assembly. "There were 225' delegates, representing 54 nations, gathered in one Toom, with a common object, but with many different ways of arriving at the goal. I found numbers of earnest and able men. While they admitted that what had beei done was far below what they had expected in the period of the League's existence) they were confident that these annual meetings of the League were creating a definite world opinion that to go to war to settle international differences should only be the last resort when all methods which appealed to reason, had failed. "I took part in the work of three important committees: First, there was the question of financial assistance to be given by the League out of 100 million gold francs to the party held not to be the aggressor in warfare by the Council of the League. Although no result that could be called absolutely definite was arrived at, it was felt generally in the Assembly that if the Council of the League had power to make an offer of financial assistance to a country wrongly attacked before hostilities could be begun it might have a substantial effect. "As I had no instructions on this point from my Government," said the High. Commissioner, "I was unable to vote, and a number of other countries who were in a like position abstained, from voting." SAMOAN MANDATE. The Samoan Mandate came before the Sixth Committee, and representatives of all countries holding mandates under the League were called in to make a short statement as to their countries' outlook. in regard to the working of the mandate. In addressing the Committee, the High Commissioner said that all three political parties in New Zealand regarded the mandate for Samoa as a sacred trust, and he was confident that, given time and patience, Samoa would be brought into no less satisfactory a condition than prevailed in New Zealand and in the Cook Islands. The inhabitants of the mandated territories were ethnologically the cousins of that Maori section of the Polynesian race alongside of which he, as a New Zealander, had grown up. The "father" of the New Zealand Parliament to-day was in point of fact a Maori. The progress which had thus in less than 100 years been realised-in New Zealand had within his owa lifetime been repeated in the Cook Islands, where relations between the white traders and the native communities had undergone recent remarkable improvement. In Samoa, the Government was still faced with great difficulties. As would be fully explained to the Permanent Mandates Commission at its forthcoming session, tnueh trouble had been given by passive resistance among the natives. Referring to certain alleged contradictions between the reports of two successive Commissions of Inquiry sent by the New Zealand Government to Samoa, Sir Thomas pointed out that any apparent discrepancies were due to differences in the terms of reference of the two Commissions. While the second has been specifically concerned with administrative questions, evidence on such topics had rightly been excluded by the firsfCommission as irrelevant to its task. He desired also to observe that, the financial burden of such, mistakes as had occurred had fallen, not upon the Samoan people, but upon the New Zealand ratepayers. New Zealand was grateful to the Permanent Mandates Commission for. its recognition, of the progress that had been made. She was fully conscious of the respect due to the Leaguo as the source of the mandates, and he ventured to believe that the day was not far distant when Samoa would be accounted the shining jewel amongst the mandated territories. AMENDMENTS TO COVENANT. The Third Committee on which, the High Commissioner served was that dealing with the amendments to the Covenant to bring it into line with the Pact of Paris. "The amendments were many and varied," said Sir Thomas, "and no dotermination had been come to as to the actual form of these amendments when I left Geneva to meet my Prime Minister. Mr. Forbes, after hearing my report, definitely conveyed to the Foreign Minister our Government's views in regard to this. I pointed out to tho other members of the Committee that while the Pact of Paris rested on moral obligations, the Covenant provided for sanctions or penalties, and I asked whether if the Pact were brought in line with the Covenant which enforced sanctions, what would be the position of America, who only signed the Pact in which, there were no sanctions. I also tried to find out from the president of our Committee whether reservations made by signatories to the Pact would be carried over to the Covenant if the amendments were adopted, but no one seemed to be very clear on this point." Tbe social events during the priod of the Assembly are really important to the League, as they_ enable tho representatives of all nations to meet on frieudly and unofficial terms. The fiftyfour nations, said Sir Thomas, all feel it necessary to provide some social function, and there are several luncheon parties and several dinner parties each day. The New Zealand delegation confined itself to entertaining the British delegation to luncheon at the Carlton Park Hotel. 31. Titulesco, the Rumanian delegate, was ejected President of tho League, and the Kumanian Government held a State function to celebrate the event. This was a reception which was attended by 1200 guests. Lady "Wilford enjoyed tho visit to Geneva, and has returned to London. somewhat better in health.