FUTURE OF THE LEAGUE

Evening Star, Issue 23130, 2 December 1938, Page 9

FUTURE OF THE LEAGUE

DISCUSSION IN HOUSE OF LORDS CRITICISM AND SUPPORT (British Official Wireless.) Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright ’ RUGBY, November 30. In the House of Lords the debate on the League of Nations was opened by Lord Ponsonby, who asked if the Government would make immediate preparations for close international consultation on the underlying causes of complaint and friction between the nations of the world. ' He also asked whether it would consider proposals for amending the Covenant so that the League might be absolved from any of its present political and military obligations and be established as an allinclusive and permanent body for_ examining, deliberation, and, if possible, resolving economic, commercial, currency, and colonial problems, which, if neglected, might continue to cause international conflict. Lord Ponsonby expressed the view that the present League was a danger to European peace‘so long as its basis was military, but if it became economic it would be an obvious solution to world problems. Lord Londonderry said it was not so much the League which had failed as that its members had not carried out their obligations. Lord Strabolgi represented the view that the League provisions for pooled security were more necessary than ever, and Lord Cecil also argued the need for the organisation of peace on a basis of collective responsibilities. (Replying for the Government, the Foreign Secretary (Lord Halifax) said that the League, as it stood, was readily available for the effective use of Governments and people if they desired to use it.

Referring to a statement by General Smuts that the United States should be admitted to the League on a special basis of membership, and for a standing committee of the Great Powers as part of the League machinery, Lord Halifax said that both suggestions seemed to him to be worthy of dose study. General Smuts had also said that no alternative to the League system for peace had been found, and that to scrap it and leave a vacuum would he an immense waste of human effort, and would leave the world without any reasonable means of procedure. That. Lord Halifax thought, was profoundly true, and he certainly would he very proud to make Geperal Smuts’s words his own.