NEW LEAGUE COVENANT

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3829, 4 November 1936, Page 3

NEW LEAGUE COVENANT

ESSENTIALS OF PRACTICAL SCHEME. “Can any practicable scheme broadly answering to these requirements de devised?” asks Dr L. P. Jacks towards the close of a lengthy contribution in the “Hibbert Journal” on the subject of “A Demilitarised League of Nations”: “(1) That in the present state of international morality there is no infallible method of preventing war. The utmost we can hope for, or profitably aim at, is to render war progressively less attractive to warmakers. “(2) That all treaties, compacts or covenants to suppress war by a general combination of armed force endure only so long as their application is not needed and are certain to collapse in the day of perfomance. “(3) That no future Covenant adopting the above method is likely to yield better results than its ill-star-red predecessor, or to be anything else than the old medicine in a new bottle. “(4) That, therefore, the League of Nations, if it is to continue, must cease to be predominantly a League of armed nations and find for itself a new direction no longer dominated by war-making considerations, leaving these latter to be dealt with by whatever agencies exist for the purpose. “(5) That the new line of direction should aim at the creation of a common interest, at once co-operative in basis and business-like in pursuit. “(6) That in pursuing this new line of action efforts should be concentrated, at first, on establishing a nucleus likely to grow, and by its growth to act as an increasing deterrent on war. “(7) That such an enterprise, if wisely conceived, would, even in its conception, be one of considerable magnitude, and such as to challenge both then and afterwards the best talent of the covenanting nations. “(8) That in framing the requisite Covenant to embody these aims no higher demand should be made on the altruism of sovereign political States than is customary in business transactions or contracts intended for the mutual benefit of the contracting parties. “Had the statesmanship of the world been disposed to spend the talent and ingenuity, hitherto devoted to the fruitless task of preventing war by armed combination, on the fruitful task of promoting positive cooperation, we may be well assured that many such positive enterprises would by this time be well afoot, and collective security, though still perhaps far off, would be considerably nearer than it now is.”