BACK TO THE LEAGUE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23704, 11 January 1939, Page 7

BACK TO THE LEAGUE

Let me confess at once that 1 am and remain a League of Nations man. says General Smuts, writing in the Listener Some say it is dead, but 1 say this helpless infant was born to lead the world to peace. The machinery of the League is experimental and may fail, but its principles are rooted in what is best in human nature and experience, and in the end it must prevail. What other alternatives arc there before us? The alliance system has once more broken down Will th> axis system, already working so unequally between its partners, prove more lasting? In the great crisis the old diplomatic methods, even another experiment of personal mediation through Lord Runciman. proved equally unavailing. In spile of all these methods and experiments. Europe was rapidly and surely drifting on to the rocks What proved successful in the end in saving the peace was the persona) intervention of the British Prime Minister, his personal contact with the German Chancellor, and finally the meeting of the four supreme European leaders at Munich in conference. If the League Covenant could have functioned in this case, there would have been none of all this extraordinary accompaniment of public excitement.