HUGHES WANTS IMMEDIATE ISSUE.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14841, 19 February 1919, Page 4

HUGHES WANTS IMMEDIATE ISSUE.

THE DANGERS OF DELAY. PARIS, Feb. s.— Mi* Hughes is endeavoring to find a way of again approaching tho .Slipreme Council -to. press it, as the provisional League of Nations, to issue immediate mandate *to Australia for the islands of the South Pacific, and to- New Zealand for Samoa. At the present rate of progress the Conference is making, it will be probably & year before the League of Nations can meet and consider the mandates. Several clauses of the draft of £he Constitution of the League will obviously require prolonged discussion, after Which the League must m seme way be deferred to public opinion m all countries before it is constituted.

Some lawyers say that it -will require a change m constitution, which will be a long business m America and Australia, and that, at least, it must come before all the Parliaments for ratification.

Mr Hughes, m an interview, asks the Australian public to consider what such a delay means, and to support him m his efforts to get an immediate decision.

"We remain at present not knowing ■what fetters may still be imposed," he said. "For we cannot know what the League -of Nations will do. It may have an infinity of interpretations. T have no doubt that we will get a mandate. The geographical positions compel that, but when, and under what conditions? The League must run the whole gamut of critics and legislatures before it is able, to speak, and may be clothed with various powers at present Unthought of."