PROGRESS OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3590, 2 January 1923, Page 21

PROGRESS OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

IMPRESSIONS OF GENEVA. TOO LIMITED POWERS. ..(From Our Own Correspondent.! LONDON, October 3. Mrs Philip Snowden has been at Geneva during the session of the Assembly of the League of Nations, and among her impressions is the one that the two delegates who dominated the Disarmament Commission were M. de Jouvenel .and Lord Robert Cecil. “In the eyes of all else (she writes in the Observer) they stood-for the rival policies ol France and Great Britain, although the simple fact was that Lord Robert had no guarantee that his Government would approve in its entirety. Clear as sunlight was it that the Great Powers overshadowed, if they did not actually terrorise, the smaller nations. It will not always be so. By certain signs of restlessness on the part of the smaller nations, and of a tendency towards a sympathetic understanding amongst themselves, it is to be believed that the Great Powers will decline in weight in the Assembly, if their deeds are seen not to square with their words, or if belief in their sincerity should increase and not diminish. The smaller nations gave evidence of a rising moral courage that may well be invoked, in time, to keep the greater nations in order. It wa3 very arresting to an Englishwoman to see the coloured delegate from Hayti mount the tribune and hear him reprove the powerful Government within the British Empire, responsible for the bombing of a small tribe of Hottentots in South Africa. Equally interesting to an English observer was the polite urgency of the British dominions that the League of Nations rather than the Allied Governments should act in the Near East dispute. I had the impression that very much less than half of what was felt was said against those in England who appeared to them too lightly to invoke the spirit of war.” THE NEAR EAST. Despite the fact that an important partof the world is not yet included in the league, the Assembly in Geneva supplied the world in epitome, and a very fair opinion could be formed of world-feeling and worldthought on the present international situation. There is not the slightest doubt that nobody wants war. Even the countries which have suffered so heavily from peiaco treaties, wellnigh hopeless for the future, whose more violent citizens might bring themselves to

believe that something of justice for 'heir country would come out of a general upheaval, would hesitate for long before filing anything to precipitate anew the calamity ot war. True it is that the utmost cynicism pre vailed amongst the delegates as a result ot that concession to Turkey-in-arms by the Allied Powers of just claims and considerations denied to the other ex-enemy States, who signed their, treaties and yielded up their military power in good faith. The moral authority of the Allies was never so low as at present. The traditional inheritance of Great Britain abroad appears to be vanishing into thin air. The moral coinage of Europe, bent and battered by the Treaty of Versailles and its fellows o£ Trianon and St. Germains, has been still further debased by the exposure of bad faith' and Imperialist ambition from the turn ot events, in the Near East. But if this latest sickening episode in the European tragedy does what I believe it will do—drive public opinion in the direction of the League of Nations as the one hope of mankind, however feeble it may be at present—it will not nave been wholly evil. Mrs Snowden found that there was intense disappointment that Mr Lloyd George did not 3peak in the Assembly. “ I have never - n my life,” she writes, “ seen so universal and passionate a longing for the presence of the one man by all who are real lovers of the league. The question of the Prime Minister’s coming miglit almost have been used a. 3 a test of the sincerity of the league’s supporters. Only those whose actions suggest a certain lukewarmness towards the league were m any degree hostile to his presence in the Assembly. The Secretariat wanted it. The little nations were enthusiastic about it. The neutrals desired it. The idealists were unanimous in wislung it. But he did not come to bless the league, as it was hoped he might, nor to make such a clear, ringing demand for peace and for the things which Iv;eke for peace which all but a ’very few longed to hear. Such a speech would have roused once again the liberal feeling and thought of mankind, buried deep under the asnes of hopelessness and of cynicism since toe days of the great failure in Paris. WHAT THE LEAGUE HAS DONE. “ But whoever oomes or refuses to come to the Assembly, whoever helps or refuses to help the league—and the Prime Minister is not one of these last—six weeks’ contact with the League Secretariat and with the Assembly have convinced mo that the league will live, and will seme day become- the healer and saviour cf men in the material sense of this language.” Mrs Snowden is tired of hearing the cheap sneers at the league which 30 often come from persons who ought to know better, who ask scornfully what the league has done, and what it can do. •'.Half-league that it is and must be, till the nations which are outside it come in, it has accomplished much in the collection and co-ordination of information on labour conditions all over the wofid ; in the settlement of labour disputes; on such questions as the traffic in women and children; on the opium trade; on international transport. It has recommended, and is gradually achieving, international action in these matters. It has repatriated nearly half a million prisoners of war. It has helped Russian refugees who, to the number of a million and a-half, are spread all over Europe. It has organised a committee and raised funds for the combat of epidemics. It has sent its High Commissioner (Dr Narisen) to help with the famine in Russia. It has stopped two wars. It has adjudicated, as fairly as the circumstances would permit, on the Upper Silesian question, and has settled amicaljjy the question of the Aland Islands. Critics of the League must not forget that the League is oompelledl to take the existing treaties as the basis of its judgments, and is not empowered to alter those treaties in the slightest particular. The powers of the League are indeed too limited, and prevent the accomplishment of much that it would like to do. But the responsibility for that is .not with the League. It goes back to the Governments. It goes farther back still —to the peoples who elect Parliaments, and whose chosen rulers refuse power and authority to the League through jealous f-if.r of parting with some small measure of national sovereignty.” SIGNS OF PROGRESS. Commenting on the Premier’s absence, the Observer's special correspondent at Geneva wrote: “There was eagerness to see him and to hear him. The public clamoured for tickets, the delegates vivaciously canvassed the reason of his coming. All agreed, however, that a declaration by him—bis mere presence, in fact—would give a great fillip to tile League and would lay down the valuable precedent that Prime Ministers should regard it as part of their duty to make the pilgrimage to Geneva. It is a pity it has not worked out so, but the episode has been of considerable value in laying down a proposition. An amusing side-issue was the conflict of opinion as to whether Mr Lloyd George was coming to steal Lord Robert Cecil's ‘thunder,’ or whether the latter, by his bold proposal with regard to inter-AUied debts and reparations, had not spiked the Premier’s guns in advance. I am able to say, however, that nobody would have welcomed Mr Lloyd George's appearance more than Lord Robert himself. He is in deadly earnest over the disarmament proposals, and is well aware that a pronouncement by Mr Lloyd George would have advanced the cause tremendously. VALUE OF INTERNATIONAL INTERCHANGE OF OPINION. “At any rate, the cause has progress.;!, and if the Near Eastern business is satisfactorly ‘liquidated’ the nations will have another incentive to devote the next 12 months to the programme outlined for them here. Apart from this great subject, the League has shown itself an instrument cf value. The free And frank interchange cf opinions between the nations’ representatives is removing international suspicions, and indicating many directions in which there can be mutual assistance towards world amelioration. It is no small step towards the advancement of civilised law and order and the standardisation ot moral values when definite steps are taken towards agreement and world codification of methods dealing with obscene literature, traffic in cocaine and other evil drugs, and that extremely difficult problem which we in England term the ‘social evil.’ The necessity for the existence of the League as an international clearing-house, as a cosmopolitan bureau of statistics and information is patent to all. The organisation that is being built up here is bound to play an important part in the development of mankind towards that goal of understanding and cooperation which will make universal j3ea.ee its natural outcome.”