DEFENCE OF THE LEAGUE

Waikato Times, Volume 111, Issue 18639, 18 May 1932, Page 6

DEFENCE OF THE LEAGUE

The League of Nations has been subject to sharp criticism and attack for its failure to deal promptly and effectively with the military operations of Japan" in China. That they presented an especially difficult question no friend of the League will deny (comments the New York Times in a sympathetic article). Nor will he deny, if lie is frank, a sense of disappointment that the League did not seem to meet this its most severe test successfully, and in consequence lost a certain part of its prestige. This feeling was particularly strong, and often scornful, in the United States, not a member of the League. How was it with a country that has been a member from the beginning and has loyally worked with it? British opinion has also been critical of the work of the League in intervening between Japan and China, and Impatient things have been said about it in England. But the settled judgment of the British public, and especially the British Government, has not been so adverse as many people here have thought. This is a fair inference from the full-dress debate in the House of Commons toward the end of March. The leader of the Opposition put some searching and almost hostile questions to the Foreign Secretary, Sir John Simon. Before he replied, however, his predecesor in offloe, Sir Austen Chamberlain, spoke for the settled British policy of the past ten or twelve years In co-operation with the League ot Nations. This is testimony from an insider, not from one who has been on the outside throwing stones through the windows. And Sir Austen bore emphatio witness to the usefulness and excellence of the wora of the League, even in this troublesome quarrel between China and Japan. It had, through the efforts of the League, been “kept between the two parties.” He did not believe in the development of the League by forcible means. The less that was heard of its “sanctions” the stronger would be its “moral authority.” He concluded: “Patience, consideration, conciliation, time —those are the weapons of the League.” Sir John Simon was equally positive in his defence of the League. He reviewed at length the whole course of the imbroglio in Manchuria n;d at Shanghai, and maintained that throughout it the League bad insisted upon the main principles of the Covenant. Without a dissenting voice the Assembly had resowed that ‘ it is contrary to the spirit of the Covenant that the settlement o, the Sino-Jap-anese dispute should be sought under the stress of military pressure.” This declaration has been at least partially accepted and acted upon by the Japanese at Shanghai. Both there and in Manchuria a commission under the auspices of the League is inquiring into the rights and wrongs of the whole controversy, and will .endeavom to reach a decision to which both parties to the contest will be expected to agree.

Sir John Simon claimed no brilliant triumph for the League in this affair. But he did insist that it bad done its duly up to the limit of its power. It remains, In his judgment, “the authorised exponent and interpreter of world opinion, and that is one of the most terrific forces in nature." When public opinion is “sufficiently strong and unanimous to pronounce a firm moral condemnation," sanctions “are not needed.” The case of the clash between Japan and China was, for obvious reasons, exceedingly difficult and trying. But it has proved once more, according to Sir John Simon, dial "the effective power of the League is best applied by mediatory and conciliatory action."