The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. “Luceo Non Uro” TUESDAY, JUNE 4, 1935. TEETH WANTED

Southland Times, Issue 25302, 4 June 1935, Page 6

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. “Luceo Non Uro” TUESDAY, JUNE 4, 1935. TEETH WANTED

When some years ago it was urged that the League of Nations lacked “teeth” arguments were produced to show that the essence of the League being peace, no application of force could be accepted as an effective means of securing obedience to the League’s decisions. The nonaggression pacts were emasculated in the same way, and the nations have fallen back on regional alliances as the best means of obtaining security. All this means that virtually no one puts any reliance on the League Covenant as a means of safeguarding it against spoliation. If the League were in a position to act against an aggressor its fiat would be given more respect, and nations would not have to rely on defensive alliances similar in principle, if not in verbiage, to those which existed before the Great War. In one way, there may be ground for congratulation, because, although no information came to New Zealand of the fact, it is clear that the League Assembly lifted the arms embargo in the case of Bolivia and left it on Paraguay, because Paraguay did not accept the League’s conditions for a conference. This decision was opposed bitterly by Uruguay and Argentina, and Brazil as well, who contended, rightly, that the League had not declared who was the aggressor in the war and could not do so, while it was wrong to ask Paraguay to give up a military advantage she had won to enter a conference which gave no guarantee of peace. In other words the lifting of the embargo was discrimination, a punishment of a League member because it declined a request to yield advantages to the enemy it believed to be the aggressor. The League has displayed no such forcefulness in dealing with larger nations. As a result the League’s prestige is not high in South America, and if peace is secured the credit will be due largely to neighbouring States, not to Geneva. Discrimination is justified only when guilt is clear and force is at hand; but in the Chaco War the League appears _ to have bungled as badly as it did in Manchukuo. While bungling continues there will be no disposition to equip the League with force to compel respect for its decisions; but collective security . against aggression does not fall into the same category as intervention in wars. The League’s position would be an acceptance of the territorial delimitations of a particular date and to insist on the maintenance of these except where changes were authorized by the League itself. Britain has declined to accept obligations to give force to the League where necessary, but she might take her part in such an arrangement if Article XIX of the Covenant were made a reality. This article requires the nations to give fair consideration to claims ,of exenemy States for amendments to the Treaty, if that were _ done Germany would be brought into a scheme of collective security which would be ready to employ force to preserve the accepted frontiers. Britain, . with other Powers, should implement Articles X and XVI of the Covenant by the use of armed force, if necessary, on behalf of any member of the League who may become the victim of an aggressor bent on altering the territorial basis of the map by force, and, as a condition of this undertaking, acceptance of an arms limitation and inspection of armaments. If the peace is brought on to a new basis, the Powers must be -ready to make collective security a real thing, with force ready to guar? antee boundaries, and there must be a realization that in the consideration of international disputes the international viewpoint must not be subordinated to

national selfishness and greed. Otherwise this system of individual alliances will grow, as it becomes clear that the League cannot enforce respect, and will not intervene except in the case of nations not in Europe.