LEAGUE AND THE COLOUR PROBLEM

Shannon News, 1 April 1926, Page 2

LEAGUE AND THE COLOUR PROBLEM

SAFEGUARD AGAINST DISASTER. "If, as experience has recently shown at Locarno, it is in the growing influence of the League of Nations that lies the beist hope or -restoring peace :o a distraught Europe, it is therd also that lies the best nope of averting disastrous conflicts with .lie 'colored raves, no longer willing- to recognise the whijre man’s claim to world supremacy,” Sir Valentine Chirol writes in the ’Edinburgh Review.’ The League h'as opened its doors to ;ill alike, and already Persia, Siam, and China, no less than Japan amongst, Asiatic nations, and tne negro States of Haiti and, Liberia, have been 'admitjtod to full partnership. No less valuable iis the Covenant which governs the relations between he “advanced nations” and more backward peoples whose destinies mid been directly affected by tne Great War. The principles laid down only apply bpceialiy to colonies ancr territories in which an actual change of sovereignity took place under tne peace treaties, but they lend themselves to the widest application, for they subs'iitujte for the old practice , of annexation with unrestricted rigntts of sovereignty, and for the establishment of- protectorates, differing lltHe from actual annexation, a mandatory authority over territories in alien oc- • eupation, to lie exercised only r> y whatever nations may be entrusted' with it, under regular supervision ny and direct responsibility to the League.

It is still a system of tutelage, but if 1 transitional system intended ;ror 'peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world,” aiid omy until such times as they shall have developed the capacity required to govern and defend themselves. Englishmen may well claim that dm principle embodied in Article XII of the Covenant, which describes a mandate as ‘a sacred trust of civilisation,” is identical with that which Burke firajt enunciated nearly a century and a half ago, when he deseribed the governance of India as a trust / to be discharged by vesting in' the-' British Parliament the control of the’ East India Company that Was jusit then being transformed from a mere trading corporation into the ruling power of India. It is no mere coincidence that the Great War, which (gave birltli to the League of Nations, should, have led also to a signal development of this principle of trusteeship in India ror ! the expressed purpose of lifting her peoples on to'a higher plane of equality and freedom. Not only did India obtain immediate representation in ihe League of Nations as one of its original members on the same footing us all the self-governing dominions of, the British Empire, but she was i granted, under the Government of India Ac-jt of 1919, a constitutional charter, which opens up for her tne prospect of attaining through stages, which it lies with her to expedite, to full and equal partnership in : tne British Commonwealth of Nations as a self-governing- dominion herself. It is a generous measure. The white man can do much to mitigate the gravity of the problem uy the exercise of Christian charity in deed anil thought in his relations direejt or indirect, with his coloured lelldw-men. What the world needs is the practical recognition of tne coloured man’s right to absolute equality : of opportunity with fffie white man, and a generous construction of the principle of trusteeship, excluding all ideas of domination or exploitation. Happily, we have now in tne League of Nations a moral court of appeal on which coloured as well as white people are entitled to sit. Let us, at any rate, close our ears resolutely to the many voices which, to quote Air.. Oldliain, "are calling us in all sorts of circumstances to show a united white front against peoplels of other colour. Let us face £h e ract squarely. A solid white front means certainly and inevitably a solid yellow front, and a solid brown front and a solid black front; and that in the end 01 the day can have only one meaning. J t means war. And it means a war --more frightful {than that which lias just devastated the white peopres ol Europe, and one in which victors and vanquished alike would be more i: remmediably involved in commonruin.