Manawatu Evening Standard. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1925. THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 61, 11 February 1925, Page 4

Manawatu Evening Standard. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1925. THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

Neither the Government nor the people of New Zealand have as yet taken the League of Nations very seriously. It is to the credit of Mr Massey that, unlike some other Dominion delegates, ho did not come back from the Versailles Conference with a swelled head and a brand new halo with the hall-mark of the League of Nations upon it and topsy-turvy and preposterous notions of the beneficent work that an international tribunal had accomplished in disintegrating the British Empire and making the Dominions just as good as the Mother Country, and possibly a good deal better. Before he could have had Sir Francis Bell or the late Sir John Salmond to advise him, Mr Massey's instinct seemed to have detected the folly and the danger of all the wild talk about the independent sovereign status of the Dominions. The necessary implication of this wonderful doctrine was that each Dominion was entitled to have a foreign policy of its very own—even though there was no power to carry it out except the Briish Navy—to be at peace when the rest of the Empire was at Avar, and vice versa, and generally to comport itself like a first-class Power with any amount of hot air always available locally for the purposes of defence and with the Old Man to supply the necessary stiffening in the event of trouble. To Mr Massey all this loose and inflated talk was anathema. While the mental balance of others was seriously upset by the new glory that they had brought with them from Versailles, Mr Massey roundly said that if he had to choose between the British Empire and the League of Nations he would be in favour of the British Empire every time.

With this simple formula of common sense and patriotism, the Prime Minister disposed of a good deal of cosmopolitan and anti-Imperial claptrap to the entire satisfaction of an overwhelming majority of our people. But it was highly displeasing to the strong pacifist sentiment which lias unfortunatoly been associated with the propaganda of the League of Nations Union in this country, and to some extent it suggested, if not an hostility, at any rate a coldness, on the part of tho Government towards the League of Nations itself. In failing to correct this impression it seems to us that tho Government cannot bo entirely acquitted of blame. A very little straight talk would have put the matter right by making it quite clear that, while prepared to stand by tho British Empire at all costs and to tolerate nothing making for its weakness or disintegration, it was not against the League but against the extravagant and fallacious claims made on its behalf that the Government protested. A statement of this kind supported by a cordial acknowledgment of the good work that the League has already done and may yet be expected to do would have put the Government right and the League right.

But no such statement was made, and the robust patriotism of Mr Massey, combined with the pacifism of prominent supporters of the League to create an unfortunate misunderstanding. When Sir Francis Bell returned from his visit to Geneva, with his natural scepticism changed to a genuine enthusiasm by the spectacle of the elaborate machinery of the League in full operation, something was done towards removing this misunderstanding. His acceptance of the presidency of the New Zealand branch of the League of Nations Union put the complete goodwill of the Government beyond a doubt and gave the organisation the chance of retrieving the false start that it had made and proving what the parent Union had made perfectly clear from tho outset, viz., that there is no incompatibility whatever between its internationalism and an Imperialism of the ardent type that is favoured in this country. Very little use has, however, been made of this opportunity. Sir Francis Bell's presidency has been a sufficient safeguard against the flaunting on the Union's platforms of the pacifist proclivities of some of its prominent members, but there has been little active propaganda of any kind. The organisation sterns to have been doing neither good nor harm, but simply drifting. Speaking from the chair of the meeting addressed by Mr J. T. Wilson, a member of the League secretariat, in Wellington on Thursday, Sir Francis Bell described the League of Nations as one of tho greatest assemblies in the world engaged in the greatest work in the world, the promoting of international co-opera-tion in all practical activities for the benefit of humanity and especially ensuring world peace. The description is accurate, but it is very little indeed that either the Government or the New Zealand branch of the League of Natiqns Union has been doing lately to make our people realise the fact.