TIMELY TOPICS

Northern Advocate, 19 April 1932, Page 4

TIMELY TOPICS

Referring to the Prince of Wales’s call to the youth of Britain, ns made at the Albert. Hall, "The Times” says: “Youth is not responsible for the existence of the problems that bewilder the world today. Nevertheless, as the Prince of Wales said, youth • is not exonerated from the duty of repairing wrongs because it did not cause them. Each generation has a. heritage of good and evil, and perhaps the Great War was as much a heritage of the past as war debts and unemployment are the heritage of today. The task of statesmen, economists, and citizens is to augment the good and overcome the evil, and in so doing to relieve the world of its oppressive burdens —‘a world’ (to quote again from Hie speech) ‘sick with fearful doubt, weary with repented disappointments, a world of troubled nations whose vital need is courageous faith in each other.’”

The meeting of the League of Nations Assembly at Geneva today will be an historic occasion in the life of the League 'and a eritical and important event in the history of the world (said the London ‘‘News Chronicle’’). Mr -A. J. -Cummings, the distinguished journalist"who is to describe its proceedings in our columns, will have a subject more important- arid -in its way more 'clfainatic than anything which has occurred in the - world since the Versailles Conference. It is the world in conference; and the point at issue is whether international disputes are to be settled henceforth by force of arms or by negotiation, based upon the loyal acceptance of signed agreements. Besides this tremendous issue nothing else matters. The whole future of the League is obviously involved in it. If the appeal to force to settle dispute is still_.accepted, .or even condoned, by-world'-opinion, the value of the League as an instrument for preserving peace .becomes , negligible. The principle on which it is based is no longer accepted. We arc back whore we were in 1.014.