The Guardian (And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times.) FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19th, 1923.

Hokitika Guardian, 19 October 1923, Page 2

The Guardian (And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times.) FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19th, 1923.

THIS LEAGUE OF NATIONS. In its early days the League of Nations tv us spoken of as ‘‘a hopeful experiment.'’ The League is not by any means generally regarded from that standpoint to-day. There is a very common tendency— not the least pronounced in the case of prominent; statesmen in Europe and elsewhere—to damn the League with faint prai.se and regard it as the local point of pious but impracticable aspirations. Whether this attitude is or is not justified, comments the “Dominion” those who adopt it at least should he prepared to recognise frankly all that it implies. It is even plainer now than when the League, was founded that its development into an effective agency for the promotion of international justice r.nd the safeguarding of world peace is the only alternative to a continuation of international unrest and feverish military preparation, out of which devastating wars will bo almost certain to arise. To-day the League admittedly is feeble and its prospects are uncertain. Its existence stems almost a mockery when it is considered that most of the European nations are devoting a greater volume of human energy and wealth to the mainteminese of armaments, and to discovert' and practical application of new forces of destruction, than they did on the eve of the Great War. This unpromising outlook may yet be transformed, however, if the intelligence fo the nations enables them to take firm hold of the fact that- the hongto cffe:s them their only hope of escape from conditions which manifestly cannot continue and extend without endangering civilisation. Should the League collapse. the world will l.c exposed to an ultimate danger of a very much more terrible war titan that which broke out in 19H—a war in which great cities would be threatened inirpinent-ly with

destruction from the air. Apart, from this ultimato danger, however, the mor 0 perpetuation of international rivalries and jealousies imposes an almost fatal liHiidieap on all forces of real pro. gress. Nations loaded down witli war burdens, and still squandering their human and material resources on military preparations and the increase of armaments, are badly placed to grapple with problems of trade and industrial recovery and social betterment. On the other hand, they become in. these conditions a happy hunting ground foilin' purveyors of the bogus revolutionary doet lines of which so much is heard nowadays. Any calm examination of the outlook leads to iho conclusion that the League arid the principles for which it. stands are the hole of tile world, and probably its only hope. On that ground alone it is plainly right that the representatives of the Empire mow assembled at the Imperial Conference should do everything in their power to sustain the League and strengthen its authority. Obviously no other policy is consistent with the peaceful aims of the Empire or will do justice to these aims. At the same time it mmt he recognised that the problems centring on the League do not always present themselves in simple shape to the Empire, or to Britain, on whom the principal responsibilities of Imperial foreign policy mean time rests.