LEAGUE COUNCIL

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 182, 3 July 1936, Page 10

LEAGUE COUNCIL

M. BLUM DISAPPOINTS. SMALL STATES AND THE COVENANT. (United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) Received July 2, 1.10 p.m. GENEVA, July 2.

M. Leon Blum’s speech was disappointing and was regarded as overidealistic and addressed to Germany in a language she does not comprehend. M. Blum barely mentioned the Abyssinian problem. Senor Solis (Panama) wound up tlie morning session of the Assembly by declaring that international law con Id not progress more rapidly than civilisation.

The League Council has decided to discuss the Danzig issue owing to the gravity of the situation. Mr Eden has asked Mr Sean Lester (High Commissioner at Danzig) to come to Geneva.

After a meeting, the Scandinavian States, Spain and Switzerland issued the following communique: “The aggravation of the international situation raises the question of whether the obligations under the Covenant still exist when it is admissible for certain articles of the Covenant, especially those relating to disarmament, to remain a dead letter while the others are applied. We are willing to examine amendments to the Covenant, but reform of the_ League without such amendments is preferable.” Official circles interpret the communique as meaning that, unless sanctions are made more efficacious, the signatories refuse to participate in future sanctions. ITALIAN JOURNALISTS. EXPULSION BY SWITZERLAND. ROME ANNOYED. Received Julv 2. 1.10 p.m. GENEVA, July 1. The Swiss Government have decided not to prosecute the Italian journalists who tried to whistle down Haile Selassie, hut to conduct them to the frontier and expel them from Switzerland for tlie duration of the Assembly. . The Italian Minister has protested and requested that they be given a reasonable interval before expulsion, and that the point to which they be conducted be the nearest to Italy. They are at present comfortable m the prison station, consuming quantities of macaroni. Signor Scoppa has informed M. Motta that unless the Italian journalists are immediately released the tension between Italy and the League will become more acute. A Rome message says the Italian Minister of Propaganda lias sent the journalists a message of sympathy a.nd support for those who are imprisoned as malefactors for showing unrestrainable disdain in the face of a grave insult to a country which was guilty only of bringing its age-old civilisation to a barbarian empire. . Signor Umberto Gugielmotti, tne national secretary of the fascist Union of Journalists has congratulated them, assuring them o their colleagues’ solidarity. He summoned the Italian branches to support Alficri, the Minister of Press Propaganda, states that the journalists’ gesture was a spontaneous reaction when they saw the delegates applauding a former sovereign of a country where so many atrocities had been committecd. It was not premeditated. The Government might, or might not, agree with their action, but tho Minister’s previous messago expressed tne feeling of the whole Italian people. Moreover, the journalists’ disapproval took the form of whistling and booing in a theatre in which it was always permissible to clap. ' , Signor Gay da declares that Europe has dishonoured herself ill disapproving of the jeers of the journalists, which were those of 45,000,000 Italians. He strongly resents M. Titulescu s comment. 1 . i i i \ torchlight procession was held in Rome in honour of the “Geneva prisoners.”