LEAGUE ON TRIAL

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 81, 17 March 1933, Page 6

LEAGUE ON TRIAL

GERMAN CRITIC’S SURVEY MR MAX BEER’S BOOK. AN EARNEST WELL-WISHER. , “After all, the long programmes were laid on the tables so that they should have food for speech and to prevent that oppressive silence from arising which is more dangerous than the most incautious words; for silence is silver and speech is golden. The nations are speaking together. Surely the reality of the League must arise from such speech.” —Mr. Max Beer, in "The League on Trial: A Journey to Geneva.” There are critics of the League of Nations in Great Britain, but on the whole it is friendly criticism, for the League does represent an ideal that is generally approved. Mr Max Beer a well-known German journalist, thinks that the League is more concerned in carrying out the provisions of the Versailles Treaty than in securing peace and concord between the nations. His indictment is well documented and his reasoning is forcible, and while adherents of the League will not altogether agree with him, yet Mr Max Beer should not, and cannot be, ignored. His book is not mere declamation.

Mt Max Beer, from his seat in the Geneva Gallery, is cynical about some of the portentous resolutions and achievements supposed to bo accomplished, which are the features of the majority of closing sessions. “If we listen,’’ he writes, “to the words uttered beneath us, we need not feel, however, that the nations are doomed; for each time that the President's hammer drops it is to signify the adoption of a resolution in which the conversation of the nations is summarised in the jolliest terms; the men beneath us recognising, considering

and acknowledging in the most diverse phraseology that everything is to their satisfaction.

THE SATISFIED ASSEMBLY. “ ‘The Assembly is happy . . . ’ Whv happy ? Happy, because the endeavours of the International Committee for Intellectual Co-operation continue progressively to prepare a knowledge of the League and a present understanding of the nations among the young. “ ‘The Assembly congratulates itself . . . ’ Why? Because preparations are being made to ensure the joint action of competent authorities for the protection of copyright. •‘•The Assembly notes with satisfaction . . . ’ What? That the International Committee for Intellectual Cooperation has undertaken new work for the defence of culture and civilisation. “ ‘The Assembly congratulates itself upon the results obtained . . . ’ Obtained by the Administrative Council of the International Institute for Educational Films. “ ‘The Assembly is happy to discover . . . ’ —that there has been a lowering of customs walls —for educational films. “ ’The Assembly expresses its satisfaction . . ’ — on the increasingly satisfactory development of international periodicals on educational films. “And now the Assembly reaches the climax of joy. It is ‘happy’ and ‘satisfied’ at the same time—it expresses its happy satisfaction to find that a monument has been erected at San Domingo m honour of Columbus, who ‘perfected the globe.’ “Our impulse is to beg them,” Mr May Beer goes on, “so far from closing the meeting, to open it; to take one single point and place it in the Agenda of their Assembly and Council discussions, of the discussions of the Disarmament Conference and of the Committee; and to call this point the formation of a League of Nations. The attempt is worth making, for the framework is ready for the experiment. “There is no lack of documents awaiting emendation — the Covenant with its twenty-six articles, and the treaties of peace, with their hundreds of articles. Numerous important papers are to be found in the library, the pride of the collection, full of stimulating ideas, forgotten at Paris and Versailles —all the profound programmes from Dubois to Kant and from Kant to Wilson await their attention. Nor is there any lack of capable, shrewd and industrious officials, of able statesmen. skilled diplomats and trustworthy experts. "The nations, too, are assembled with their gradually growing suspicions and their eagerness to see something done; they display their wounds—wounds caused by peace no less than by war. Above all, there is the accumulated experience which has demonstrated in the course of twelve bitter years that the methods of Paris will not do, and that there are others which will. “Let then the session be opened without sell-deception or deception of the nations. For. unless there is a rapid change of heart, the nations will Io e their last hope for the realisation of the League ideal. Why is it that the League declines to come into existence? It is because the present organisation occupies the place which should be occupied by the League. • u your work is destroyed. I “It is you, the rulers at Geneva, I who have ousted the old proprets, and I while you have ruled at Geneva no new programme for a League has been produced. And yet you must not simply vanish; for if your work is destroyed every enemy of the great meal will exclaim that the impracticai bility of the League has been definitely I established, and even its friends will I look upon it as a mere Utopia. I “If the first attempt to realise the ! League coming at the end of the six i hundred years of endeavour proves a failure, before the new foundations for I the true League have boon laid, we shall have lost the ground gained in six hundred years, and shall have returned tp a staga,earlier than that of Wilson, of Kant and of Dubois; and even if some enlightened ruler were to uphold tho cause of the nations in a world w. such n championship would ■ bo useless. The cause of the nations

is your cause; let the session be opened.

“The hammer is raised in the President's hand; it falls; the session is ended.” In a serious mood Mr Max Beer informs the delegates:— “ft is in your offices at home, at your own desk, where to-morrow the messengers with important air will inform visitors that you have returned from Geneva —it is there alone that the League can exist; there is no other soil in which it can grow, flourish or prevail. The League must form a part of your daily documents, and of your telephone conversations; it must become a part of the daily debate of the nation; and it is thus and only thus that it can spread from one Foreign Office to the next, from Paris to Berlin, and from London to Rome, becoming the never-ceasing international longdistance conversation of the nations. The League must become an inspiration at I vjv before we can rediscover it in the i. . -golden fairyland at Geneva, in the house by the Quai Wilson, and in the Ing halls of stone and glass. “The pilgrims from Geneva are spilt I rom the stations in the capitals and from the harbours of tho Mediterranean and the great oceans, so many sparks scattered over the globe; and Havas, Wolff, Renter, Stefani, Pat and F’abra duly report: ‘On the conclusion of the League session the delegation left Geneva by tram. There were present at the station . .’ ’’ Mr Max Beer’s impatience is after all the best kind of criticism. He is not against the League—he only wants it to be the real League for which the world wait’. Every League enthusiast should get this book, and while they will realise the sincerity of Mr Beer’s plea, they will thank the able translator, Mr W. H. Johnston, for his sympathetic work.