LEAGUE MAKES WAR EVER MORE DIFFICULT

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 259, 23 January 1928, Page 9

LEAGUE MAKES WAR EVER MORE DIFFICULT

POWERFUL ASSEMBLY CHAMBERLAIN ON ITS AIMS British Wireless—Press Assn.-—Copyright ' Reed. 10.40 a.m. RUGBY. Saturday. j The memorandum on security which was forwarded to the League of Nations this week continues to attract attention in the Press, which generally regards it as a closely-reasoned document, embodying some permanent principles of the British foreign policy. Speaking in Birmingham last night on the growth of the influence of the League of Nations, Sir Austen Chamberlain, Foreign Secretary, said that, provided the council is governed by prudence and wisdom, he believed it would as the years go by prove an ever-steadying influence for peace, and that it would be more and more difficult for any Government to affront or to despise moral judgment. Therefore, the policy of all States would ; have to reckon with the authority of ; that great assembly of nations. Sir Austen Chamberlain said that a tribunal which was prepared to declare a law, or when the law was known, to assess damage for wrongful acts, might be an unfit tribunal to which to refer for settlement questions requiring technical or administrative or political qualifications.

The dangers were illustrated by some recent treaties to which Britain had not been a party, but which were concerted by ether Powers, who in their desire to cover the whole area of the possible dispute, had undertaken to refer to the Permanent Court of International Justice questions incapable of legal determination, and therefore unsuited to a tribunal of that character.

There would be a real danger to the authority of that Court, and its development on right lines, if it were required to decide questions which could not be determined by any rule of law, and which in their nature were essentially political and required, instead of a court of justice, a body of political conciliators for their resolution.—A. and N.Z.