THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18174, 21 August 1922, Page 8

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

9 ■ ■■ PRIME MINISTER'S VIEW. NO POWER BEHIND IT. AMERICA'S ALOOFNESS. [BY TELEGRAPH.—-SPECIAL REPORTER.] WELLINGTON. Saturday. "I am not going to speak disparagingly of the League of Nations," said the Prime Minister in the House-last evening, when discussing international affairs during the debate on Sir John Salmond s report on the Washington Conference. "L will simply say that it may lead' to a false sense of -security. That is the trouble with the League. It has no power 'behind It. There is nothing to enforce its deoisions. Unless the stronger nations of the world join" with the League of Nations, I do i)ot think anything of tho sort is possible. The United States will not join. Germany will not join. Russia is in such an awful state that it cannot join, ancPl do not think it would be any good if it did. As the reirult of this, we nave a lot of third, fourth, and fifth-class Powers making up not the whole of the League, but a great part. "I sympathise with anything that would make for peace. I should like to see a combination of nations led by Britain and America, a combination that would bo able to say to all the other nations that they must keep the peace, Thsit would be, a sort of national police. I believe it wii, come."