LEAGUE OF NATIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22398, 20 October 1934, Page 17

LEAGUE OF NATIONS

REVIEW OF ITS WORK A WORLD BALANCE SHEET. (Fsoir Ovr Own Correspondent.) LONDON, September 14. Dr Benesh, the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, who, as chairman of the Council, presided over the Assembly of the League of Nations pending the election of the new President, devoted the customary discourse to drawing up a balance sheet designed to illustrate the debit and credit sides of the League’s activity. Public opinion, he said, blamed the League—he thought wrongly—for the present failure of the Disarmament Conference. The recent departure of Germany and Japan from the League must certainly be placed on the debit side of the League, though he did not agree that this was evidence of the geenral weakening of the League, as had been asserted in some quarters. The League was a collective organ subject to variations on the part of its individual members, and its history was likely to show ups and downs. Its only course was to carry on. It was a real weakening in the League’s record that for two years two member States, Bolivia and Paraguay, had been at war over the Chaco, that the Covenant had been indisputably violated, and that the Council had not been able to put an end to the conflict. The question had now been referred to the Assembly, which would have to face its responsibilities. The present position in the Far East must also be placed to the debit side of the League’s account. The situation between China and Japan, the question of Manchukuo, and the prevailing tension between Japan and the Soviet were facts* the exceptional gravity of which no one could dispute. THE CREDIT SIDE. On the other hand, they could claim that the United States had been drawn much closer to Geneva. Further, there were efforts now being made by a large number of countries to bring Soviet Russia into the League— a country without whose co-operation conditions in Europe and the world would never return to normal. A League success was the stopping of war over the ownership of the fort of Leticia between Columbia and Peru. Other credit items was the signature of a number of pacts of special co-operation a.nd non-aggression and certain joint “demarches” of the three Great Powers to ensure the independence of Austria. In certain circles there was fear that war might break out. Some even thought war was in the air and hanging over ou» head. Dr Benesh felt that war was not inevitable to-day, and that responsible mes possessed appropriate means to prevent it. He thought that conditions showed that society was moving painffllly and gradr ally towards more normal conditions.