ITALY AND THE LEAGUE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19041, 15 June 1936, Page 13

ITALY AND THE LEAGUE

(To ih<: Kditor of tho Hnrald.) Sir,— Eight or nine months ago your .able newt* was lull ul tin; League o» .Nations and tho war. Now tluu'e is Hardly anything. \Vo are obviously TiriFting." towards war. The, beagiu; ha= i'aiied so badly and is so discredited that everyone is pushing on with rearmament "as it was in the days' sipforo (ho League. That can only lead .o war. Arc. wo going to sit idle, Hypnotised by the war myelinic, till we Slip into its jaws again. We. arc; all to i,lame, France, America, England, Germany. It is no use asuing which was the worst; tho important question is what are. wo going to do now. The first thing is to endeavour to make everyone realise the imminence of the danger, and face the fact that we nave, all broken our promises and ah nave been to blame; and the second is 10 insist, on a peace, conference now, ocforc, instead oi at the end of the ncNt war. This conference would be asked to look for and remove at least tho worst of tho injustices complained of by tho defeated Powers, and to look for and removo the weak spots in the league of .Nations. That was done ai Ueneva in 1924 when the Geneva t'eace Protocol was unanimously agreed to; but in March, 1925, a new Government was in power in England, a Tory uovormnent, and they rejected it. Then representative, Sir Austen Chamberlain, stated that his Government wished the i.eague. to rely on moral force, ami he declared his conviction that no nation, however powerful, would dare to defy the judgment of the world expressed at Geneva." Wo were wrong. It is obvious now that wo cannot have, international law unless (.hero is force behind it. Let us then go back to the Peace Protocol of 1924, re-examine it, and see what can be done now on similar lines. Of course, our present British Government will not do that unless it is forced, it has always and intentionally left everything vague and indefinite so that it will be free to do what suited itself in every emergency. That, is the fundamental cause of the failure of the League. No one could co-operate with us because no one could tell exactly what we would do. That will have to be altered. It will lake a popular explosion such as blew out the Hoarei/ft'val plan, but it is that or war. Another thing that must lie done at once is to punish Italy for her barbarous use of poison gas. A move is being made to lift sanctions and coax Italy back into the League; there is even talk of Joans to Italy. Instead of that she should be expelled from Ihe League at once and the sanctions imposed on her should be made permanent. Of course, that will not help Abyssinia much, neither docs it help the victim to hang his murderer, hut we do not shake hands with the murderer, we hang him. If the. League welcomes Italy bad; again, politely saying nothing about poison gas, the League is finished. The natural comment on all this is,

'lt may he right, but even if it is, we, here in Gisborne, 0:111 do nothing." 1 do not agree with that, General Smuts and General Hertzog in .South Africa have recently spoken very strongly on sanctions —a little help from New Zealand would be of vital importance. As a Scot 1 look back to the battle of Rdnnockburu, the greatest battle in Scottish history, and it was decided by the gillies, or camp-followers. The battle hung in the balance from early morning (ill well in the day. (ho gillies decided they could not stand out of it, they must fake ti hand. Gathering what, weapons ti py could they came march. iflC stoutly down over what, is still culled the "Gillies' Hill," ready to "do or die. ' The battle had been a stubborn oiu\ both sides were exhausted, so at the sight of fresh men coming against them the English broke and (led. Inspired! by the spirit of these humble camp followers, let us at least protest, against the futility and stupidity of the armaments race and express our horror at the. idea of condoning the, Italian use of poison gas and again receiving. Ftaly as a friend at Geneva. Yours, etc., THOS. Tcrbi),