IDEAL OF WORLD PEACE

Taranaki Daily News, 21 January 1935, Page 7

IDEAL OF WORLD PEACE

PROBLEMS OF NATIONS GENEVA’S GREAT ORGANISATION. REASONS FOR SOME FAILURES. DISTRUST BETWEEN PEOPLES. Impressions of the League of Nations, formed after three years’ work on the secretariat at Geneva, were related last night at New Plymouth by Dr. J. B. Condliffe, D.S.C., M.A., during a lecture under the auspices of the League of Nations Union and the teachers’ summer school. Mr. D. M. Rae, president of the school, introduced the speaker. The seat of the League at Geneva was an unimpressive place, said Dr. Condliffe. It was an old hotel on the waterfront facing the house to which Byron had brought Shelley. There he had found the secretariat and had gradually come to realise that the League was not an institution so much' as an idea, a method of handling problems of national life. It was composed of different sorts of committees; the General Assembly, a yearly meeting of three delegates from each member State, a council- consisting of 15 members in all, representative of the great powers and elected men from the smaller ones, innumerable committees to deal with standing, technical questions such as finance, drugs, communications, etc., and various ad hoc committees to consider minor problems which governments felt could not be adequately settled by single nations. The representatives of the latter committees gathered at Geneva as a convenient place where they might have continuity of work and opportunity for reference and co-operation. The essence of the League was the attempt to solve problems by bringing nations, or their accredited representatives, together for discussion. The personnel of the committees changed but the idea persisted. The League was a new method of handling foreign affairs, forced on nations not suddenly or even as a result of the Great War but by the pressure of modern scientific subjects. It was as likely that radio, cinema or any .other recent invention would fail as that the League would. Aeroplane, wireless, every type of communication with the new element of speed, had made the world one huge nation where each country impinged on the others. For the logical solution .of problems there must be co-operation. All over the world were multifarious representative bodies created for special purposes and their presence proved that responsible men in many different lines had found it necessary to co-operate before settling national problems. MOST IMPORTANT BODY. The League was the most important of international bodies, because the nations, even at the price of a minute part of sovereignty, must find some way of peaceful living if civilisation was not to be destroyed.

The League had known 15 to 18 years of growth and work, said Dr. Condliffe. One might be moved to irony at the thought that the idea had evolved at such a seemingly unpropitious time. The world was at war, propaganda loosed among the people, feelings high and even children taught to regard the foe as monsters. Yet the League expected the nations to live at peace and the lion to lie down with the lamb. In addition to the bitterness between peoples tire war left some awkward legacies, some of which Jtill remained and formed some of the most difficult of the smaller issues the League had to face. Clauses embodied in a vindictive treaty had lost the support of America until recently, and it was significant that the States finally entered because of the feeling among officials that they must take part in international discussion before settling technical problems. They sat on social and technical but not political meetings. Last year President Roosevelt had led the nation to full membership of the International Labour Organisation and it was hoped that America might soon decide to share the political responsibilities of the League as well as the technical ones. It was true that countries left the League, but others joined it and it had been said that it would be a dull month in which no nation either left or entered. Whereas Japan and Germany had been lost Soviet Russia, Turkey, smaller States like Mexico and Ecuador, and even America in part had been gained.

To the League had been handed over the more difficult political problems which the war treaty had not solved. It had been given the administration, under Austrian chairmanship, of the coal mines in the Saar Valley. After 15 years the people had peaceably agreed to go back to Germany. But the Saar constituted only one problem of many. Towns like Danzig, islands, or territories between two nations, were controlled by the League, and it was only the neutral management that prevented these danger spots from flaring up and starting a war. POLITICAL ASPECT OF WORK. Sensational news of the League generally concerned the political aspect of its work, said Dr. Condliffe. This might be broadly divided into two sections. One was the attempt at conciliation in difficult cases likely to lead to war. Every member State had the right, freely availed, of putting its case before the League. A case of this kind was that which resulted from the murder of the king of Yugoslavia and the French Minister of Foreign Affairs. Ultimately the trouble simmered down into a mild controversy between Hungary and Yugoslavia. In 1914 after a similar incident the situation was entirely different. There was no machinery for consultation and the only communication was a one-way system between the capitals. To-day ministers came to a place with a neutral atmosphere. They confronted their enemy across a table at which sat the representatives of other powers who put on all of them a pressure towards conciliation. In the same room were 500 journalists and a few representatives of the general public. Each man knew that every word he uttered and every meaning that might be construed would be sent round the world within a few seconds. Public opinion was still strong against war and sought a rational and equitable solution of differences. Each representative had to reckon with the force of that opinion and Dr. Condliffe said he believed its weight was sufficiently strong to ensure the improbability of hostilities breaking out in Europe, or over any major dispute outside it. The public was, after all, made up not only of women and returned soldiers who had suffered in the Great War but of the world leaders in banking, finance and commerce who realised that the evils of war did not end with it. Chaos and dislocation followed when man power was turned not to construction but destruction. The League of Nations, continued the speaker, had its failures, partly on account of very difficult circumstances, partly because it did not set itself up as a super-government with power to enforce its decisions. Whenever governments saw a way out of their troubles or took a strong line the League functioned smoothly: but when they were truculent like Japan and two countries

in South America, or when the representatives seemed to hesitate in applying the usual procedure, the machinery partly broke down. There was a difference of opinion about this aspect of the League. Some said it should back its decision with force and should be prepared to call its members to war in order to prevent war. Up to the present time, however, it had followed the experience and principals of the British federation of nations and aimed at being not a central government, armed if necessary but a centre of consultation where disputants could find a common solution.

As well as political unrest the world had suffered economic disturbance since the war. An American economist had said truly that the greatest lessort of the great depression was that the world could not afford any more world wars. America had become the creditor of all the nations and if she was to be paid there must be a tremendous reorganisation of world trade. The problem was still unsolved and out of it had arisen an upheaval during which the international system broke down and each nation adopted a scheme of economic nationalism. Thus while political interests were drawing away from internationalism science was rushing towards it. The action of the two forces created vast problems.

The technical sections were an impartial part of the League, said Dr. Condliffe. Experts on all types of subjects gave advice to the nations though it was not always followed. After Lausanne when the powers had buried the reparation problem and seemed ready to co-operate the depression reached bottom. A conference was to be held and League experts prepared a workable plan of action. Yet though one of the foundations of the plan was altered when America went off the gold standard they were not given time to adjust their findings before the conference was held.

Dr. Condliffe pointed out that the fear of war arose from inability to co-oper-ate and ultimately from the attitude taught in Children should be trained to think of themselves as units, not only cf the social system of their own country but of a new commonwealth of all nations.