The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 1927. THE EUROPEAN PEACE,

Hokitika Guardian, 7 April 1927, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 1927. THE EUROPEAN PEACE,

“The League of Nations,” said the British Foreign Minister quite recently, on his return to London from Geneva, “is moving slowly, as it should move, but is gathering strength.” This, it seems, to an exchange, is a very limited measure of praise for the organisation which, against so much adverse criticism and open or covert opposition, has been working steadily ever since the war to promote the world’s security and peace. What was wrong with the League at the outset was that the idealists who promoted it expected to:) much of it and predicted for it too sudden and overwhelming a success. It is only by slow degrees, as Sir A. Chamberlain has said, that mutual confidence can grow up between the nations. But the League, while it has failed to achieve the incredible and impossible triumphs foretold by its most enthusiastic votaries has amply justified its existence during the past eight years, and to-day its influence as a factor in international affairs is more potent than ever. The London “Daily Telegraph” in summarising the work of the League since the war. has used a peculiarly apt and effective phrase—“the eflfacement of the feuds of Western Europe” The term “feuds.” with its implications of local jealousies, racial prejudices and hereditary vendettas, applies remarkably well to the enmities that have so long threafp" ed the peace of Europe and converted into hitter foes such nations as the Italians and Austrians and French and Germans, who should long since have realised that their cogimon interest*

lie in co-operation to secure international amity and goodwill. Me- promised evacuation of the ithiue, provinces and the neacHul settlement of the diflieull and dangerous Saar quotion b\ the intervention of the League give striking, proof of the. poleney of the inlluemes emanating from Geneva and l.or-arno. There is one special phase (if the League’s activities which so far seems to have been largely misrepresented or misunderstood. Why. it lias been asked, in France Italy. America, and in England as well, should Britain display so much eagerness to -ecuro the adherence of Germane to the ieague? Why should concessions be offered and sacrifices made to induce the Germans to enter the League before they display any willingness or anxiety to avail themselves of its benefits? Solicitude for the world’s peace will not alone explain these things. Why was it so urgently necessary that Germany should lie speedily restored to file comity of civilised nations!-' W e may answer the question in the terms which the "Daily Telegraph’’ employs—‘‘so that she should not be driven bv senseless ns-

t racism into the ranks nl the enemies of Kuropc.” We may. if we please, disc unit, the gravity of that "Soviet menace' in Asia.* on which the "Daily Telegraph” lays so much stress. But

it is a matter of common knowledge that Russia had made great efforts to detach Germany from the Western Powers and to induce her to embark oi the great Bolshevik revolutionary campaign against Western civilisation: and if the League - of Nations has supplied an effective antidote to the pestilential infection of Bolshevism, and secured the solidarity of Western Europe, it has limply justified the hopes and efforts of its promoters.