WHERE LEAGUE OF NATIONS FAILED

Chronicle (Levin), 11 April 1946, Page 5

WHERE LEAGUE OF NATIONS FAILED

^ CQVENANT NOT USED. Received Wednesday, 8.15 p.m. GENEVA, April 9. ; Viscount Cecil, in a farewell address i to the League of Nations, said: "The work of the League is printed unmistakably on the world 's sociai, t eccnomic and hamanitarian life. j Ahove all, a great advance has heen made in the international organisation for peace. The League failed to preserve peace, but that does not mean that the work of 20 years goes for nothing. All the main ideas remain." The charter of the new organisation, he said, recognised more clearly than did the League 's Covenant that in the last resort peace must be enforced. The League had failed solely hecause the memher States did not genuinely accept the obligation to use and support the provisions of the Covenant. This was due to several causes. The generax ■ British official opinion was either neut tral or hostiie, and he suspected that that was true of other countries Cahinets seemed to think that all that was needed was to give generai ana somewhat tepid approval, and if that ! -was not enough it did not matter very t much. Ihey forgot that they were fighting the ancient institution, which had been romanticised and glorified, that itational sovereignty involved the right ! oi the fire and the sword in favour oi anything resemhling national interests. "We had not the patient investiga tions of the Nuremberg trial to show to what fearfui lengtlis opinion of this kind might drive rulers," he continued j "I wonder whether that is fully recognised even now. I am not so afraid oi the common people; they seem to be . sound enough. It is the military and i polit'cal experts who give me qualms. The old view that the national safety : depended on national preparation seenis : to he still powerful, and certainly ; scientific discoveries will make future i wars infmitely disastrous. "There is no safety except in peace. Aggression, wherever it occurs and how- : ever it is defended, is an international crime which it is the duty of every : peace-loving State to crush, employing ! whatever force is necessary."