THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20255, 15 May 1929, Page 16

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

Sir.—The people of every civilised country are looking to the League of Nations and the Pact Against War to relieve society, from the incubus of military preparation on air, land, and sea. also to remove the possibility of the awful stupidity of another world war, waged with all the destructive forces of modern chemistry and science. To point out what little progress has been made in this direction by the statesmen and leaders of all civilised countries it may be instructive to recall the words (spoken 80 years ago) of a great statesman, thinker and humanitarian. The following is from the speech of Victor Hugo made in 1849 at the Cfeugres de la Paix: "The day will dawn when your arms will fall*from your hands. The day will come when war will seem as absurd and be as impossible between Paris and London, Petersburg and Berlin. Turin and Vienna, as between Rouen and .Amiens, or Boston and Philadelphia. The day will come when, you France, you Russia, you Italy, you England you Germany, nations of the Continent, without losing your separate characters and glorious individualities, you will fuse in a superior unity and constitute one European brotherhood, even as Normandy, Brittany. Burgundy, Lorraine. Alsace, join hands in France. A day will come when our battlefields shall be markets, open to all products, and minds, open to all ideas. A day will como when your bullets and your bombs shall be replaced by votes, by the universal of the nations, by the venerable arbitration of a great sovereign senate, which shall be to Europe what her Parliament is to England, her Diet to Germany, and our Legislative Assembly to France. A day will come when, in' our museums we shall exhibit a cannon as now we show an instrument of torture, and wonder that men should ever,'have used such things. A day will come when you shall see two multitudinous and friendly groups facing each other on either side of the Atlantic, the United States of America and the United States ol Europe." A. J. Willis.