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THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

MR. MASSEY'S COMMENTS

WARS ARE STILL POSSIBLE

THE DUTY OF PREPAREDNESS

"Historians have said that the result of the Congress of Vienna was a harvest of wars," the Prims Minister (Right ■Hon. W. F. Massey) at the New Zealand Chib luncheon yesterday. "I hope that we shall see no such outcome of tho Conference of Paris, from which 1" have just returned. I hope that the fruit of that Conference will be, to a great exte it, peace on earth and good will to-

Sards msn. ''The Conference gave a great deal of earnest /attention to ilie promotion of | reao* by uuaiis of the League of Nations. I J want to say that no possiblo objeci tion could be taken to tho principle em- | bodied in tho League covenant. We have I to admit right away that the League i will not necessarily prevent wars AMiat I n-e all expect is that it will make wars ! less frequent in the' future than they j have been in the past. 1 here uas no difference of ouinion regarding tho. principle. There was some difierence of I opinion as to th& measure of success likei k to be achieved. i ""The feuiidaciou members of the ! league aro Allied nations, which ! «tood together during the Great War— j Great Britain, I'Vance, Italy, America, ! ,-uk! Japan, iiirae nations fought lor i freedom and justioe, and they j have deserved the confidence of ! the other nations of the world. We realise that the League must have t'crce ibehlnd it. I am not going to discuss in detail how thai; force should bo secured and applied, but ihe force must be there. You have merely to look mound the world to-day realise that there are many hundreds of millions of pecple, ill different countries, who will acknowledge no argument; but force, and are only kept within iJteir own boundaries and prevented from, violating the rights of others by force. If they aro to be kept within their own boundaries in the future and compelled to live decent lives as nations, the force must be there, just as police are required to support lnw in our own countries. "That raises tho whole question of armaments. We as British citizens must remember the part that force will still play in international affairs, and we must not forget that the war could not have been won without the British Navy. I inoludo with the British, vNavy the British mercantile marine. In saying that I do not detract at all from the tremendous efforts put. forth by other Allied nations engaged in the war. . . . Without 'the British Navy wo would probably have been to-day under tho dominion of Germany. Such being the case," it will be our duty and the duty of those succeeding us-I am not anticipating another great war during the present generation—to keep the British Navy up to a safe standard of strength. ' "Wo have two mistakes to avoid. We | must not imagine that the League of Nations is coming into existence fully matured and able to assert itself right away. The League may take twenty years to attain its full growth, and during that time it will require the best brains of the Allied nations to make the additious and amendments that circumstances may require. Then we mustj not imagine that because we have! founded a League of Nations we have done everything that it is possible to do. We must not allow ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security, j lam not a militarist. If . war could be ewept away for over by a stroke of .tho i>en, otorv ono of us would be proud to make the stroke. But wars have not been made impossible. We must all face that fact, and. we must be prepared to accept as a duty the preservation of (he Empire. The chief means of doing that is to maintain t.he British Navy at the requisite standard."-

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DOM19190819.2.116

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 277, 19 August 1919, Page 8

Word count
Tapeke kupu
665

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 277, 19 August 1919, Page 8

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 277, 19 August 1919, Page 8

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