FRENCH PROPOSAL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22545, 12 April 1935, Page 9

FRENCH PROPOSAL

ARMED FORCE FOR LEAGUE DOMINION OPINION UNFAVOURABLE (British Wireless.) RUGBY, April 10. The Secretary of State for the Dominions (Mr J. H. Thomas) was asked in the House of Commons whether any of the dominions had at any time been consulted regarding the French proposal of March, 1933, for an international aerial police force for the purpose of preventing the misuse of civil aircraft. He said that throughout the course of the Disarmament Conference there had been constant consultations with the representatives of the dominions on all aspects of the problem involved. So far as he was aware no dominion Government had made any official pronouncement on this particular proposal, but there had been published from time to time statements of the dominions’ representatives indicating dissent from the conception of the League of Nations as an organisation with an armed force of its own. Answering a supplementary question, Mr Thomas cited as the pronouncement of one of the dominion representatives the speech of General Smuts, in which he said: “If the attempt were made now to transform into a military machine the League of Nations to carry on war for preventing or ending war I think its fate is sealed. T cannot conceive the dominions remaining in such a League which has to fight the wars of the Old World, and if the dominions leave it Great Britain is bound to follow.”