LEAGUE'S ODD JOB

Waipa Post, Volume 45, Issue 3212, 4 August 1932, Page 8

LEAGUE'S ODD JOB

"This League of Nations is concerned with a number of matters you may not have expected " wrote Mr C. Strelt in a recent despatch to the New York Times, —" with whooping cough and the Wiailing Wall, with the wandering of girls and the anchoring of buoys, with how to save the whales, cure the lepers, and sell the poets, with the liquor traffic and motor traffic and the drug traffic and the Danube traffic and the slave traffic, black and white; with taming the Yellow River in China and the yellow fever in Liberia, with archaeology and aviation, with floating mines, coal mines, and vitamins."

Such a varied list of activities is neither exaggerated nor exhaustive; there are by now very few matters with which the League of Nations is not, directly or indirectly, concerned. Disarmament and the gradual building up of the machinery of arbitration as

a substitute for war, are, of course, in the forefront of its programme. But, acting on the principle that " prevention is better than cure," and believing that the more the nations of the world can be brought to realise, and to work together for, their com-mon-interests, the less likely they will be to endanger those interests by war, the League seeks to develop all forms of international co-operation. All over the world health inquiries are being carried on; the Malaria

Commission, after having visited the

United States and practically every , Mediterranean country, has lately been studying malaria in India; the Leprosy Commission has . research work in Japan and South America; and last September the Council accepted the offer of the Brazilian Government to create an international center in Rio de Janiero for the study of that disease. In Africa efforts are being made to conquer yellow fever and to get rid of the tse-tse fly, which spreads sleeping sickness, the terror of the native population; even as far afield as Melanesia experts have been makingsa?§urvey of health conditions among tfieSiatives. In Europe rural health officers, sani-

tary engineers, agrarian experts, and

administrators have been discussing together for the first time this summer the great problem of how to make the countryside healthy; inquiries are taking place into the causes and prevention of infant mortality, into the milk supply, the fumigation of ships, the standardisation and purity of vitamins, the efficacy of X-rays in connection with cancer, and innumerable other subjects. In fact, there is hardly a country in the world which ■has not profited directly from the League's health work. Another side of the League's work in which international co-operation is all-important is in the fight against such evils as slavery and forced labour, the abuse of dangerous drugs, the traffic in women and children, and the forging of currency. Modern criminals are not bound by national frontiers, and certain of their activities can be checked only by unceasing vigilance and co-operation on the part of all nations. Thus, we find one of the sCßigs C ßig Five" from Scotland Yard going to Geneva to discuss with re-

presentatives from other central police offices how best to detect and punish men who have forged currency in one country and have then fled for ; refuge to another country. Or, again, information collected at Geneva from ; #ll over the world concerning the illicit drug traffic has led to huge seizures of opium, cocaine, and other drugs concealed in jam pots, false •.neapboards, iron bedsteads, double .boxes, and all sorts of odd devices, :and, to the unmasking and ruin of big international gangs of smugglers. Less sensational, but equally useiul, is the work being done to simplify -and improve communications and transit. ••' Navigation, for instance, is toelped by efforts to unify the laws relating to the river systems of Europe or to lighthouses and buoys. Private individuals gain> too, for when the League's recent Convention on ■Road Traffic is i nforce, you will no longer need to fear that, if you take your, car abroad, you may not be able •to understand the police signals and road signs in a foreign country, for all countries will use the same standard signs.—yernon Bartlett.-