Manawatu Evening Standard. THURSDAY, DEC. 15, 1932. A DISCIPLE OF PEACE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 15, 15 December 1932, Page 6

Manawatu Evening Standard. THURSDAY, DEC. 15, 1932. A DISCIPLE OF PEACE.

The Great Hall at University College, Oxford, where hang the portraits of many world famous Oxonians, has had added to it the portrait of one of the University’s greatest men, an idealist who did not hesitate to throw aside the trammels of practical politics when they sought to interfere with his ideals; one who ere now might have led the British Cabinet had he been less a disciple of peace. In honouring. Viscount Cecil of Chelwood for his services in the cause of international co-operation and goodwill, those concerned with the memorial recognised the outstanding qualifications of one whose sincerity of motive has created a deep impression upon the nations of Europe. It is to Viscount Cecil that the League of Nations owes a great deal of its establishment. He it was who, after a brilliant political career as Lord. Robert Cecil —the brilliant son of a brilliant Prime Minister, the "late Marquess of Salisbury—went to Paris in 1919 as a private individual to co-operate in launching' the League. His ideals went far beyond the inclusion only of those who were allies in the Great War; he could not visualise a lasting international peace structure unless all the erstwhile belligerents joined in. Conjointly with the setting up of the League as an official international organisation, there grew apace a remarkable bulwark of public opinion to support it and spread its ideals. In truth, it has been said that the League of Nations Union, to which we refer, is almost as potent a power for the peaceful settlement of international disputes, and almost _ as active a body for the suppression of slavery and the abolition of the drug traffic, as the League itself. To Viscount Cecil the Union owes its foundation. How such vigorous and expert advocacy of the cause of peace could be brought to bear on the subject by one man is not so difficult to realise when we look back over Viscount Cecil’s career. In his Oxford days he was a prominent speaker at the Oxford Union; he read law, was called to the Bar and became a K.C. Four years after entering the House of Commons in 1906 he had made his mark, and after holding several important positions in the War Cabinet, including that of Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs, he became Assistant-Secretary of the same Department in 1918. As already related, he was largely instrumental in the formation of the League; but his energies in the cause of his ideal did not stop there, with the result that in 1927 he resigned from the Baldwin Cabinet, in wMch he was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, owing to serious disagreement with the Government’s disarmament policy, which came to a head with the failure of the Naval Conference at Geneva. In his memorandum to the Prime Minister he stated that, while serving as a delegate on the Preparatory Commission, he was “over and over again compelled by. his instructions to maintain propositions which were difficult to reconcile with any serious desire for the success of his labours.” In short, he was out of sympathy with the instructions he had received. Viscount Cecil did

not lay aside his labours for a lasting peace with his resignation, however, and his influence through the League of Nations Union in Britain is a tremendous force behind the shaping of disarmament policy by statesmen. It is fitting that his labours should be recognised as they have been now, as they were earlier when, in 1924, he was awarded the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Peace Prize, which, by the way, he tj r pically devoted to researches into peace promotion methods.