LEAGUE OF NATIONS

Evening Star, Issue 19050, 19 September 1925, Page 10

LEAGUE OF NATIONS

• aASSEMBLY MEETING DISARMAMENT AND SECURITY SHI CECIL HURST’S HARD LOGIC. Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright (Special to Australian Press Asbocu tion.] GENEVA, September 17. For the present, with the League of Nations Assembly not sitting, interest centres in the Third Committee’s discussion on armaments, on which Spain 1 introduced a motion in favor of preparatory arrangements being immediately carried out, so that the disarmament conference can be held the moment security seems attainable. Denmark, Sweden, Serbia, Czechoslovakia, and Japan indicated that they were readily disposed to initiate the technical investigation in order to enable the Disarmament Conference to get to grips w'itli its subject without delay, but steadying words of hard logic came from Sir Cecil Hurst (Legal Adviser to the Foreign Office), who asked if the failure of the Treaty of Mutual Assistance of 1923 and last year’s Protocol was not largely due to the fact that they had not taken into account the opinions of those in their own Government departments wdio w'ero charged with the responsibility of ensuring the national safety. However strong was the League’s present position in the eyes of the world, its prestige would be seriously endangered if its disarmament efforts constituted nothing but an unbroken scries of failures. They could not afford to envisage the prospect of a third failure, and must ensure that whatever emerged from the conference it would be gilded with success. It was essential Hint they should carry into that conference the opinions and feelings of those responsible for public security, which some-* times were stronger than the opinions of the masses. Otherwise, if technical investigations were taken up immediately, they would run the risk of encouraging the minds of the masses in an idea that the millennium was at hand, and that the League could do more in its present state than it was really able. They should leave the Council to say when the time was opportune to approach disarmament, instead of binding hands, as the present proposals would. They w'ere all agreed with the broad principles, but Britain must express doubts in the matter of procedure. Sir Cecil Hurst’s speech, wdnch was the last before the adjournment, was received in stony silence. It will he interesting to hear France in closing the debate to-morrow, for M. Boncour, in the Assembly, was emphatic that'there could not ho disarmament before security. France would not enter any engagement before she was sure that she would bo able to keep it; but there is an impression that M. Boncour will accept the preliminary inquiry ys ft means of preventing President Coolidge from taking the initiative before the next Assembly.—A. and N.Z. Cable. _________ INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE. GENEVA, September 17. This afternoon the First Commission was on the point of agreeing to a, harm-less-looking Swiss motion urging the seventeen States which are the signatories to the compulsory jurisdiction clause of the International Court of Justice to take stops to renew the undertaking. Sir Joseph Cook (Australia) pointed out that it was asking thirty-seven other States to advise something winch they had not adopted. Let the seventeen States, he said, agree among themselves to renew their obligation, and nor seek to catch others in the net. After a long_ debate the motion was amended, leaving the Secretariat to advise the seventeen States of the procedure for a renewal. —A. and N.Z. Cable. NO SECURITY WITHOUT TRUST. GENEVA, September 18. (Received September 19, at 9.25 a.m.) Mr E. A. Drake-Brockman (Australia), in temperate, hut frank, speech, said that the statesmen formed last year’s Protocol with their eyes only on Eurono. yet they believed that they were legislating for the world; coiisequentlv there wore elements in it unacceptable to the nations outside Europe, and the world was no nearer to the ideal of disarmament. How could there be security, when appareutly every nation in Europe distrusted every other nation. Let the League of Nations steadily persevere in euconragiiirr trust among the nations. Trust was a condition precedent to everything else.—A. and N.Z. Cable.