LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18566, 26 November 1923, Page 11

LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

SUPPORT OF DOMINIONS.

LORD R. CECIL EXPLAINS.

THE PREMIERS IN REPLY.

[FROM OUR OWN correspondent.]

LONDON, October 19.

Last week Lord Robert Cecil explained at length the work of the League of Nations to the Dominion Prime Ministers, each of whom subsequently made a considered statement. Lord Robert addressed the Conference with the object, as he said, of making some' kind of estimate 'of the present position of the League and what place it ought to occupy in the foreign policy ol the Empire. He laid .emphasis on the point that it was not a super-State to give laws to the world. He defined it as an international organisation to consider and discuss'and agree upon international action and the settlement of international difficulties and disputes. It was a method not of coercive government, but a method cf consent. Public opinion, not a force, must be its instrument. Lord Robert explained in considerable detail the position of the League with reference to the recent dispute between Greece and Italy, and contended that the Council had done exactly that it ought to have done under the Covenant. He did not think that Italy's repudiation of the competency of the League had done thd League's authority as much harm as some people believed. Hfe urged that the League must be made more and more the cornerstone of the Empire's foreign policy. Unless they got rid of the idea of force and compulsion there was little hope of a pacified and restored Europe. In the discussion that followed all the Dominion Premiers insisted upon the necessity of strengthening the hands of the League. Mr. Massey said that the idea had been created that the operations of the League would prevent ■war. He never thought so. He did not think for a moment that the prevention of /war by the League was possible. The League was initiated to promote peace—peace by arbitration, peace by conciliation, or peace by bringing to hear public opinion. He believed a very great deal of good had been done by the League, and it ought to get credit therefor. i Australia, said Mr. Bruce, would believe that the foundation of Britain's foreign policy should certainly be to support the League of Nations and make its authority as great as is possible. "The League ©tight to show great discretion in the next few years. If it tries to go too far and too fast and to achieve all the objects it has in view in too short a time, I think it will defeat its own ends. The League is, never going to do what we hope while there are great nations outside it. But the League should be kept alive because, if it goes, we have no hope of establishing anything of the sort until we have been through another world tragedy." , General Smuts, (South Africa) spoke whole-heartedly in support of the League, the ideal of which, he said, seemed to be the only hope of the world. If in practice the League had not realised the great anticipations of those who originated it. it was because of its youth and inexperience and of the difficulties, of the times through which we are passing— when it was almost impossible to keep any good cause afloat. / In the interest which it was arousing the League was adding a new bond of cohesion of the Empire, "In speaking of the Italian-Greek crisis," said Mr. Mackenzie King (Canada) "and the relations of the League thereto we cannot from a distance but feel that the extent to which public ' opinion was focussed on the dispute was a thousandfold by virtue of the * Act that the League's authority to a certain extent League's apparently, to a certain extent had apparently ibeen ignored.*'