AUTHORITY OF LEAGUE

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 14 September 1935, Page 6

AUTHORITY OF LEAGUE

Security of the World Depends Upon Collective Peace EFFORT TO AVOID CHAOS FRANCE REMAINS HOPEFUL (British Official Wireless.) Received 2.30 p.m. to-day. RUGBY, Sept. 13. M. Piere Laval’s speech was brief, but emphatic. “France,” be said, “placed all its confidence in the League. Sometimes we have been disappointed at Geneva, but the Covenant is our international law. To weaken the Covenant would be to weaken our security. I speak in the name of a country which docs not fear war, but which hates it.”

M. Laval recalled the Locarno Agreements and the agreement with the Little Entente and with Soviet Russia, and he repeated: “In weakening the Covenant we should weaken our own security.” Recalling the Rome conversations, when all Franeo-Italian difficulties were removed, he said: "We have done everything to maintain onr friendship At Stresa we did all we could to create peace and we worked for the general peace of the world.” Turing to a more direct consideration of the Abyssinian dispute, M. Laval said: “Since the incident occurred I spared no efforts at conciliation and in the- ultimate effort which the Council is now making I shall do my utmost to bring about conciliation. I mb still hopeful and I shall persist in these efforts. -I do not believe that the ‘ease is hopeless. At the table of a committee of five there was a discussion of every proposal which can possibly give satisfaction to Italy to solve the dispute, but these must be on the basis of respect for the integrity of the territory of another member of the League. FRANCE AND BRITAIN. M. Laval emphasised that there was no disagreement whatever between France and Britain regarding the methods of seeking a peaceful solution“We believe altogether in the great ideals of the League, and I ranee is hound by the Covenant- of the League of Nations and by the obligations she has undertaken. France will not shirk her responsibilities.” 'A brief address by Sir Samuel Hoare on the work of the League in connection with the Italo-Abyssinian dispute was broadcast from Geneva. Referring to the work of himselt and Mr Anthony Eden, he said that the British people would want to know whether the chances of a settlement between Italy and Abyssinia- were better or worse than they ware a few days ago. He thought it could be said they were no worse but whatever might happen in the end none shall say that the British Government and its representatives had not made every possible effort to avoid what they considered to he a grave calamity. He added that he had been deeply struck at Geneva by the respect with which Britain and, indeed, the whole of the British Empire, were held by the world. “I have tried to put to them the typical British point of view and in particular to impress to them first of all our universal desire to have peace and he able to live in accord and, secondly, our desire to keep our word we have solemnly given in the covenant of the League,” he said. „ FAST FAILURES OF LEAGUE. Speakers in the League Assembly after M. Laval included the Aga Khan, who said : “Conception of collective security is appealing to Indian thought as the only alternative to an international anarchy with an evergrowing force.” At the same time criticisms of the League in India on the grounds of the size of her contribution and its past failures were also growing. In Glasgow the general council of the Scottish Trades Union Congress passed a resolution declaring that the authority of the League of Nations and the obligations under the covenant should be upheld by the British Government and by the people of Scotland and that any action which would weaken the authority of the League would be a disastrous blow against a collective peace system upon which the security of the world depends.