FULL SUPPORT

Northern Advocate, 23 October 1935, Page 7

FULL SUPPORT

FOR THE LEAGUE BRITAIN’S FIRM STAND FOREIGN SECRETARY’S SPEECH. [British Official WirelessJ (Received 1.30 a.m.) RUGBY, October 22. In his speech at the House of Commons, Sir Samuel Hoare reaffirmed the Government’s full support for the League of Nations and the principles of the Covenant. He said that they must not clamour for miracles, but they might fairly recognise that the League had never before shown such encouraging vitality. Referring to the temptation to which some in Europe have been inclined to yield to throw up the task as hopeless when the issue lay between the League and one of its most powerful members Sir Samuel Hoare remarked that to Britain too the temptation was very real. “There are other countries that have more to gain from the League than ourselves. The obligations of the Covenant not only increase our commitments at a time, when, for many reasons, we desire no further commitments. but they create controversies between Powers that have always been friendly to each other, and economic complications that none want.

“When we are just beginning to struggle out of the slough of world depressions, these are sexdous disadvantages, and might well have tempted us to take the line of least resistance, to admit the failure of. our conception of collective security, to disinterest ourselves with the Abyssinian controversy and to say to the world that the Covenant cannot, in such a case as this, be applied at all.”