Untitled

Hokitika Guardian, 21 May 1937, Page 4

The means by which the League’s efficiency can be restored as an instrument for promoting peace is the subject of a letter to the Times hearing many influential signatures, including those of men of such diverse experience and outlook as Lord Hardingo and Mr Lansbury, Lords Astor, Arnold, and Lord Trenclmrd and Canon Raven. The letter states:—Tf all nations were members of tbe League, if the League possessed powers to revise treaties, reduce barriers against the movement of goods and of people, and to remedy other conditions calculated to lead to war, economic sanctions might prevent aggression without serious risk of war. But it is quite clear that the present international tension and crisis is fundamentally due to the fact that' the League lias hot been able to deal with any of the major problems of the contemporary world. It has been unable to modify frontiers admittedly unsound, to abate economic nationalism—though this is by far the biggest single cause of social unrest, dictatorship, and international tension —or to limit armaments, just as it was unable to give to Germany, even when it was a republic, the “equality” which was us natural right. To urge us, therefore, to commit ourselves not only fo economic but to automatic military action, instead of equipping the League to do justice as between nations, is simply to increase and not diminish the risk of explosion. It will inevitably result in dividing the world into two great military alliances, the one standing for the status quo, the other for revision of it, with more and more of the smaller Powers returning to neutrality, as Scandinavia, Belgium and Switzerland are already doing. We believe that the ideals of the League represent the only road toward lasting peace. But we believe that the wav to restore the League is not to turn it into an international war office, but rather to prove -..at it is an effective instrument for reconciliation, for the settlement of international disputes by pacific means, and for the removal of the causes of war.