LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 46, Issue 14259, 16 November 1920, Page 5

LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

GENEVA CONFERENCE.

FORTY-TWO COUNTRIES V, REPRESENTED. '■ '»’ (By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) (Received Tuesday, 8.55 a.m.) GENEVA, Monday. Tho Swiss President, M. Mot a, opened the Assembly of the League of Nations. Forty-two countries are represented. M. Hyman (Belgium) was elected president of the Assembly by ballot. FIRST PARLIAMENT OF THE WORLD. (Received Tuesday, 9.5 ami.) LONDON, Monday. The Australian Press Association correspondent telegraphs from Geneva that the city is en fete. Early to-day the streets were profusely decorated with flags of all nations and crowded with spectators. At 10.30 all the bells in the cantonment. rang merrily. A procession headed by the Gendarmerie and Hussars conducted the members of the Federal Council and Chamber to the Hall of the Reformation, which was selected for the first meeting of the first parliament of the world. The interior-of the hall was plain ./to severity. Members of- the occupied benches on the ground floor, 150 pressmen in the first gallery, and the general public in the upper gallery. The delegates, were seated in the Alphabetical order of their nations. Senator Millen (Australia) occupied a seat immediately iu front of the tri-' gone and New Zealand half way up the hall. M, Hymans read the proclamation summoning the League; then President Motta, on behalf of Switzerland, welcomed the delegates. M. Mota proposed M. Hymans as the first president of the Assembly, and he was elected by 35 votes to 6. Mr Hymans, in replying to M. Motta ’s welcome, referred to the brotherly welcome Switzerland gave to prisoners and wounded in war time. The meeting of this great assembly at Geneva would have no inconsiderable place in history. It. was- proof of men’s yearning for an equitable and lasting peaceful organisation in connection With international relations. The covenant was not perfect, and could raise delusive hopes that by some magic wand we were going to transform the world or change man’s character. The League must not be a super-State absorbing national sovereignties or reducing them to bondage, but a League that, .must play' a powerful part in preventing a national crisis. Mr Hymans concluded that he was convinced that the League would respond to the need and appeal from the souls of the peoples after the frightful drama out of which they had recently emerged. The League sought step by step to achieve a reign of international morality and human right.