VIEWS ON LEAGUE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22539, 2 October 1936, Page 13

VIEWS ON LEAGUE

ME. JORDAN AT GENEVA QUESTION IN HOUSE POLICY OF GOVERNMENT STATEMENT BY MR. SAVAGE [BY TELEGRAPH —SPECIAL REPORTER] WELLINGTON, Thursday The views expressed by the High Commissioner for New Zealand, Mr. \V. J. Jordan, at the League of Nations Assembly at "Geneva were referred to by the Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates (Opposition —Kaipara) in an urgent question in the House of Representatives to-day.

Mr. Coates asked the Prime Minister, Mr. Savage, if Mr. Jordan's views represented the policy of the New Zealand Government and whether they meant in effect that once the League named a State as an aggressor New Zealand would automatically put into force full sanctions.

Mr. Savage said the views of the New Zealand Government on the question of the reform of the Covenant of the League of Nations were fully stated in a paper tabled in Parliament on September 9. The views expressed by Mr. Jordan on New Zealand's participation in a complete and automatic system of collective security as reported in the press cables did not seem in any <■ way inconsistent with this statement. The statement referred to by Mr. Savage was published in the Herald on. September 3, having been released for publication before it was tabled in Parliament.

IN THE LIMELIGHT EMBARRASSMENT TO POWERS COMMENT BY SYDNEY JOURNAL *|. "The newly-appointed New Zealand" High Commissioner in London, the affable 'Big Bill' Jordan, attending the League Assembly fully charged with his Government's passion for international justice in the case of Abyssinia, found himself in a position to embarrass delicate plans for reconciliation of the leading Powers of Europe, and boldly proceeded to embarrass them in this ethical cause," states the leading editorial article in the Sydney Morning Herald of September 25. The comment arises from Mr. Jordan's initial utterances at Geneva. "It is true," the article continues", "that a credentials committee . . . differed on the question of accepting the credentials of certain delegates, ostensibly for Abyssinia, but, since that country has been conquered and its Government has departed, rather delegates for the moribund Abyssinian cause. But New Zealand, with Mr. Jordan's bold demand before the League to know who denied the Abyssinian Emperor's right to fight his case, took the limelight: New Zealand, by count of population the smallest State in the League and the remotest, but by virtue of membership of the British Commonwealth able to arrest | special attention. . Story in Cablegrams

"Our cable messages tell the story. Mr. Eden sat by, looking glum; French comment expresses bitterness and mortification at the offence given to Italy and the undoing of much diplomatic work for the Locarno conference; Mr. Jordan suns himself in the satisfaction that his Government's views are 'endorsed by a majority of the Assembly.' "So Abyssinia enters the Assembly and brings friction anew in its train. An Abyssinian delegate invokes the Almighty to strengthen the League to make amends for its past errors; Italy will apparently remain outside with Germany, to damn the League and all its works, its proposed reform, and ] the moves for a new European understanding. It may not go so far as all this. Both Britain and France still have diplomatic means of persuading both Italy and Germany to come to a conference which has nothing to do with the present League and its current pre-occupation. Macaulay's New Zealander

"Within the League, apparently, there is nothing to prevent the Abyssinian delegates and all the minor States from talking tilt the crack of doom about the wickedness of the major Powers and the injustice of their not precipitating another world war in the cause of driving Italy out of Ethiopia. The probability that that motive would be speedily lost to sight in the said world war is. of course, ignored. "Meanwhile," the article concludes, "we are arrested by the sight of New Zealand in this unexpected limelight—at a moment, too, when our Australasian neighbour is about to replace this Commonwealth in a seat on the League Council; and we recall Macaulay's prophecy, in one of his famous Essays, of the future day 'when some travelling New Zealander shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.' Is it destiny, or merely the price to be paid (and what a price!) for the satisfaction, to the last drop of European blood, of the equitable rights of an unfortunate African community?"