FUTURE OF LEAGUE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 109, 8 April 1936, Page 2

FUTURE OF LEAGUE

BOUND WITH LEAGUE. (United Press Association- —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) (British Official Wireless.) Received April 7. 1.46 p.m. RUGBY, April 6. In the House of Commons, Mr R. A. Eden said the important lessons to lie learned from the Italo-Abyssinian dispute were that a League limited in membership was inevitably limited in effectiveness. Financial and economic sanctions could not be immediately effective if the membership of the League was incomplete. It might be said, viewing all that had happened, that we Should not have attempted to stop the war. He did not agree. Turning to recent events, the F oreign Secretary recalled that Britain supported the oil but France insisted on another effort at conciliation before the embargo. Italy, since acceptance of conciliation, had intensified her aggression. It was the view of the British Government that there must either be real conciliation, resulting in a cessation of hostilities in a given period, or ,the committee of Eighteen would have to face its task again. But, whatever the final verdict might be, the responsibility must be shared by the League. “We will take our share, no more or no less. As regards the German reply, Britain could not go to the meeting of the Locarno Powers with the idea . of conciliation being dead. It is essential that the German proposals should be co-ordinated by the League.” • Mr Eden added: “If we can see, by the end of the summer, all the nations of Europe as members of the League, a new structure of security in Western Europe replacing Locarno, and the strengthening of security elsewhere by arrangements directly controlled and supervised by the League, we shall have gained so much more security for Europe that it will then be possible to enter upon larger schemes relating to armaments and economics and the strengthening of security afforded by the Covenant itself.”