The Guardian And Evening Star, With which is incorporated the West Coast Times. FRIDAY. MARCH 4, 1927.

Hokitika Guardian, 4 March 1927, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, With which is incorporated the West Coast Times. FRIDAY. MARCH 4, 1927.

* THK LEAGUE OF NATIONS. I Thk Bishop of London who is HoW ill J New Zealand Inns nnnle il A point durA in his world tilin' to speak with chtrJ ity and earnestness abvuit the League I of Nations. He stresses the vAlne of J the League’s activities, and refers with I adniifatloVi to what the League has aocOinplished. There have licett Tailuros —heeauso it has hetfli unahle to make its authority ielt in some recent crises 19 —hut it has not forfeited the right to II he seriously regarded as a medium to j|| maintain peace. It is true that Upon occasions—such as that which has arisen in Chinn—friendly critics have had to Ixrmoan the inability of the League to interfere. But that fogi-et establishes all the more .strongly a belief that if the League were properly enabled to interfere it could almost certainly effect a settlement of the whole trouble. And the reason why it

cannot properly interfere is because it has never l>eon allowed to function as its authors intended. Unless, and until every great nation is included a am ong its members its activities are | necessarily handicapped; and by one of | the strangest and nnhappiest ironies of I fate, that great nation, to whose dead 1 President we owe the first conception I of the League, is the very nation I which now, hv refusing to join its I ranks, prevents its full efficiency. As I the Bishop of London reminds us—and | as he reminded the people of the Unitj cd States with a candour upon which he is to he congratulated—there are now only two nations of any importlance who remain outside the League. They are Bolshevik Russia—and the United States! It is a distinction and an association, upon which Americans

can hardly pride themselves; for that effect has l>een, if not “to throw a spanner into the machinery,” at least fo prevent the League assuming that position of world-mediator which its merits warrant, and which, but for this refusal of American politicians to honour the promise of their President, it would most certainly have assumed long before this. Unfortunately a j splendid conception became the sport of local politics, petty prejudices help- v ed the had work along, until to-day the I original American attitude of passive resistance to the League lias degener- j

ated into open hostility. The Bishop 3 of London gave some illuminative de- y toils in Sydney of the effective work j which the League has alreadv done, despite the enormous handicap upon its efficiency to which we have referrod. It has prevented five wars, in one of which Great Britain would cer- S'

tiiinlv lime been involved ; it has enabled at least, three of the nations of Europe to will their way back to financial stability; it has aided the hopeless Armenians and Syrians, whom the Allied Powers had abandoned. All these things—and lnaity more of lesser importance, perhaps, lint certainly not of lessor humanity—it lias accomplished

in live years. Surety that is a record which, its Dr Ingram asserts, must command the admiration of +ho world. Tt would command it were it more generally known; hut:, owing to the unhappy tendency of which we have spoken, these good deeds are too often disregarded, and the stoppages and disappointments, which, through no fault of its own, the League has been forced to experience, are cried aloud as evidences of its failure. Bri-

tain’s pari has h. on that of a mainstay to the authority and power of the League. Through the Bank of England the League was enabled to save Greece and Austria and Hungary. In finance generally the same financial institution llils dolie much towards the ideals of the Lodgnc. And the name of Britain stands high indeed in the annals of the counsels of the League. All that was hoped for the League of Nations could yet be brought to pass were the I'niled States to join hands with the other nations to buttress the authority and power of the world organisation.