AN URGENT TASK

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 61, 9 September 1937, Page 9

AN URGENT TASK

NO ROOM FOR PARTISANSHIP

COMMENT IN LONDON

(British Official Wireless.) (Received September 9,11.25 a.m.,) RUGBY, September 8. The advance party of the United Kingdom" delegation to the League meeting at Geneva left London this morning. The Foreign Secretary, Mr. Eden, who will lead the delegation to the Assembly and also the delegation to the Mediterranean! Conference at Nyon, is expected to leave London tomorrow by air. In London there is no suggestion- of any change in the plans for the conference as a result of the tension which has arisen between Italy and Russia. The keynote of the Press comment this morning on the conference is that its object is severely practicable and that the urgency of its task and common interest of all the Powers in its accomplishment leaves no room for recriminations and partisanship. ' "The Tunes" thinks that the divisions between the Powers according to their political sympathies are already serious enough, and says that the procedure now offered is designed to restrict those divisions by concentrating international effort upon a practical task. "Is any country prepared to defend the sinking of unarmed merchantmen at sight and —if anything could heighten its barbarism —in time of peace? If not, what remains but to complete technical measures for its prevention? Nyon is offered as a meeting-place for action, not for recriminations." Both "The Times" and the "Morning Post," the latter of which is severely critical of the Russian Note

to Italy, make it clear that if doubts and suspicions delay or prevent acceptance of the Anglo-French invitations Great Britain will have no recourse but to adopt drastic independent! measures for the safety of her shipping, or, as "The Times" expresses it, "No one" can dispute the right of the consenting Governments to concert every appropriate naval measure for the protection of their merchantmen from further irresponsible and barbarous outrages." While no precise information is available regarding the proposals which the British delegation proposes to- lay before the conference, it is | known that from the beginning they will insist on the urgency of the situation and the necessity for avoiding political recriminations which might cause delay in reaching appropriate de'eisions.