THE LEAGUE INDICTED.

Evening Star, Issue 20979, 18 December 1931, Page 8

THE LEAGUE INDICTED.

There is safety sometimes in generalities. Mr Louw, the South African Minister to Washington, was on securo ground when, to an American audience, he described the League of Nations as a “hotbed of intrigue.” Americans would easily believe that, whether they were of South African or other descent. The charge lias been made before, and no doubh there is more than a suspicion of truth in it. Delegates to the League are the representatives of their Governments ; internationalism is no more yet than a new growth; and intrigues for national advantage can he conducted at Geneva as easily, or almost as casilyj as anywhere else. It was a mistake, however, for this Minister to go on to refer to the League’s “miserable failure to settle the Manchurian problem,” for that charge must naturally involve America, whose co-opera-tion with the League has been complete. It might prompt the reminder that, after a hundred years, there are some racial troubles that have not been settled yet in South Africa, The League has not yet succeeded in establishing peace in Manchuria. With America’s assistance it is still working to that end. But it has prevented war from being the predominant condition there over a period of three months, and that makes the best augury for still greater success. During that period it has done a great many things besides—how many may be faintly suggested by its record for public health. The Assembly which was sitting when the Manchurian trouble began, reviewing the extensive activities of the Health Organisation of the League, expressed its appreciation of the .methods of international co-operation recently developed, and noted with special satisfaction that tlie experience of the organisation was being made available to States members of the League to an over-increasing extent, During the discussions special references were made to assistance rendered by the Health Organisation in Greece, Bulgaria, Roumania, Liberia, Bolivia, China, and Czecho-Slovakia. The Assembly recognised that it had become one of the most important tasks of the Health Organisation to give assistance to Governments asking tor advice on the methods to ho employed to solve gone-