Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Over 50 Years.] TUESDAY, 23rd JULY, 1935. LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 23 July 1935, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Over 50 Years.] TUESDAY, 23rd JULY, 1935. LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

Japanese aggression in Manchuria in September, 1931, suddenly subjected not merely the theory, but also the machinery of Geneva, to a rigid but by no means unfair test. In itself, the action of Japan constituted a refutation of the assumption that, in the eyes of all peoples, war seemed the supreme evil. For what Japan was doing was war, and, when they were confronted by the expressions of condemnation of the public opinion of the world, the Japanese people stood by their own Government. It remained, therefore, for the League to perform its evident duty and preserve world, peace by dealing effectively with an act of pure aggression. _ From the very outset it was plain that the maritime Powers, Great Britain, France and Italy, were unwilling to put their resources, naval, military or financial, at the service of Geneva to apply sanctions to Japan. All were ready to share in the work of the Lytton Commission and in the ratification of its findings, but none w r as ready to risk war with Japan by giving effect to the decisions of the League. As a consequence, it was from Geneva and not from Manchuria that Japan retired. The failure of the _ League was thus complete, but its champions undertook to disguise the implications of this failure by asserting that Asiatic conditions differed from European, and Japanese ethics from those of the Western world. In 1932, hoAvever, while the Manchurian debate was still in progress, the League was subjected to a second test, and this time the issue was European. The Treaty of Versailles had condemned the German people to a permanent inequality in the means of self-defence. Hitler violently flung Germany out of Geneva, and with similar violence proclaimed German purpose to rearm in total defiance of the restraints of the Treaty of Versailles. V hat, then, remained of the original assumptions upon which the League had been launched? ‘With the arrival of the great depression, the problem of peace was taking on a new aspect, For a decade after the

Paris Peace Conference, German, Austrian and Hungarian insurgence against the treaties had been explained as the natural consequence of the blunders of Paris. Had the victors displayed more intelligence and less vindictiveness in dealing with their helpless foes, so the argument ran, these recent enemies would have voluntarily associated themselves with their former opponents in the task of preventing war. But with the disclosure of Japanese designs upon Manchuria, of Italian upon Ethiopia, and of German upon the Ukraine, these old indictments lost something of their former weight. In fact, it began to be clear that for the future the great issues affecting the question of peace were not those of ethnic unity or of strategic security, but primarily those of economic selfsvfficieney.