LEAGUE OF NATIONS

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVIII, 23 January 1928, Page 7

LEAGUE OF NATIONS

INFLUENCE GROWING. FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH. STATEMENT BY SIR AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN. (By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) Received January 23, 11.5 a.m. RUGBY, Jan. 22. Speaking at Birmingham last night on the growth of the influence of the League of Nations, Sir Austen Chamberlain said that provided that the council is governed by prudence and wisdom he believed that it would, as the years went by, prove an ever-steadying influence for peace, that it would be more and more difficult for any government to affront or to despise its moral judgment. Therefore, increasingly, the policy of all States would have to reckon with the authority of that great Assembly of Nations. Sir Austen Chamberlain added that a tribunal which was prepared to declare law, or when the law was known, to assess damage for wrongful, acts might be an unfit tribunal to which to refer questions requiring technical or administrative or political qualifications for settlement.

Its dangers were illustrated by some recent treaties to which Britain had not been a party, but were concerted by other Powers who, in their desire to cover the whole area of the possible dispute, bad undertaken to refer to the Permanent Court of International Justice questions incapable of legal determination and therefore unsuited to a tribunal of that character.

There would be real danger to the authority of that court and its development on right lines if it were required to decide questions which could not be determined by any rule of law which, in their nature, were essentially political and required, instead of a Court of Justice, a body of political conciliation for their resolution.—British official wireless.