A.-6

38

refugees, the organization of a'defence against the epidemics from the east of Europe, achieved with very little expense anil with absolutely complete success. Or you may take its social activities : the great efforts and the successful efforts it has made to strengthen the fight against opium ; to extirpate the horrible traffic in women anel children, which is one of the elisgraccs of our civilization ; the assisting and protection of Native, races ; anel a ve;ry large; part erf its work which is subsidiary to the League, but, in a sense a, part erf it, its work in the International Labour Organization. Or you may take its economic work : the gresat amount of work it has already done to facilitate the increase; of transit between nations, or the; smaller matters that it has haei something to do with, to relieve the hindrance caused by passport regulations, or the work which it has ekme quite lately, the other day, to induce the, nations to agree on a convention for the enforcement of commercial arbitration, a thing of immense importance to the commercial interest all over the, world. Or you may take its financial work : J neeei nert go back on the old Brussels Conference of 1920, although. I still think that was a vesry considerable effort towards the financial re-establishment of the; world, and that it eieserved better practical success than it actually achieved. Or you may take the; better-known and more striking success, the very, very considerable steps that have been taken te)wards the financial rehabilitation of Austria—very remarkable work—l have not time to deal with it in any detail, but the Conference is well aware of the very remarkable success that has been achieved in that direction. Ser remarkable is it that Hungary is asking us to help he;r in the; same kind of way, though, 1 hope, with less contingent financial liability than in the. case of Austria; and unhappy Greece, which has been saddled with a terrible financial problem erf providing for a million refugees- i.e., a quarter erf her whole, population—in addition to the existing population, is asking us to facilitate the raising of a loan for that purpose, and the establish ment erf a, scheme for the settlement of these; refugees em a sound economic basis. Or you may take its administrative work: the; administration erf Danzig, the administration of the Saar, the various administrative duti<;s which have been thrust upon it, or have been offered to it, by the Lausanne Treaty ;or you may take the number of other cases—l will not, weary the Conference by enumerating any more —from what is called the intellectual co-operative work,, which I thjnk perhaps has more the sympathy of our continental neighbours than ourselves, down to a conference feu fixing the movable feasts of the Church so as to have a fixed holiday instead of a, movable one. All this work has been done;, and, I think, with very great and remarkable success, and, considering the immense amount of advantage that has accrued to the populations of the world, with wonelerfully little expense. Ido nert believe it could have been done in any oilier way than by the existence of the League. Improvement on Previous Procedure. If anybody who is familiar with these things considers what, under the old system of a diplomatic correspondence and special conferences perhaps called of a partial kind, which have no machinery to carry them out between their summoning, if you consider that, I think you will agree that the work could not have been done except by the League;. The, truth is that the League really has done splendid work in all these respects, and, as Lorel Curzon said the other day, the League has exerciseel a wholesome and conciliatory influence in world politics. Ido not think it is right to underestimate the immense importance; of all these kinds of activities in that conciliatory influence on the larger political questions which have to be transacteel between nations. But,- of course, all that is comparatively a minor matter. Status of League in International Disputes. The second object erf the League; is the; object, erf achieving international peace and security ; and any one may well say, " How can you make any claim for the; League if you considor the condition of Europe now, after the League has been in existence for three or four years ? " I feel the force of the observation. But, in the first place, I must point out that the League, is only what the Governments composing it choose to make it. It is for them to say. As 1 have already explained, it is not a super-State, it has no coercive jurisdiction —it is for the Governments to say how much or how little work they entrust to the, League. The League was not asked to deal with the Russo-Polish War, and it was not asked to deal with the Turco-Greek War ; it was not asked to deal with the question of reparations ; and it is those three big questions more than, anything else that have boe;n responsible for the unrest which still prevails in Europe. No doubt, of course, it may be saiel that if it had been asked to deal with those three big questions it woulel have failed. All one can say is that that may be so, but the organizations which have attempted ter deal with them have not been pre-eminently successful. On. the other hand, as every one knows, in tins number of smaller questions which have been entrusted to the League, the. League has succeeded in allaying the; elifficulties anil disputes which have come before it. i need not recount the circumstances of those disputes —the question of the Aaland Islands; the question of Upper Silesia; the question of Albania and Serbia, which was a very dangerous question ; and even the question of Vilna, which many people regard as one of the least successfui matters ; but war between Lithuania and Poland was prevented. 1 think no one can deny that the work of the League; die! not meet with complete success, yet it did do this : it prevented any further fighting on the subject, and stopped the fighting which was already in progress. Italian-Greek Crisis. But all these are smaller questions, and that is why the recent Italian-Greek question is of such enormous importance in the history of the League. It was the first occasion on which an international dispute of the first order —one which might easily have led to serious wars in Europe —it was the first big question that had come before the League, and it is for that reason that I hope the Conference