The Sun MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1928 THE COST OF PEACE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 461, 17 September 1928, Page 8

The Sun MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1928 THE COST OF PEACE

THE League of Nations costs about £25,000,000 a year. Its revenue is contributed by 55 nations, representing threequarters of the whole world. Divided among them, the aggregate of payments for an organised effort to keep the peace is a bagatelle. If computed in relation to the mass of population concerned the contribution of each person is less than the proverbial widow’s mite or the most wretched beggar’s pittance. It is a microscopic expenditure on the avoidance of disastrous war. It has been said time and again, even by the League’s friends and supporters, that the League is prodigal in spending money that relatively is got easily and given with more goodwill than generosity. There may be something in the plaint about extravagance at Geneva—the pleasant environment there encourages a delightful standard of living both for the delegates to the periodic conferences and assemblies of the League and its army of officials, experts and clerical workers. It is always a temptation to spend public money without much anxiety as to the worries of the absent contributors. But allowing for all possible waste and heavy expenditure on the pursuit of many rainbowcoloured ideals other than the idealism of world peace, which is as beautiful as the lilacs and violets by the lakes and in the valleys of Switzerland, the League has a long way to go before its total expenditure equals the cost of four years of international war; Compared with the expenditure on the war and the Himalayan post-war debt, which will be a millstone around the neck of posterity for many generations to come, the League may continue its present annual rate of spending for two thousand years or so before it exceeds the total cost of the Great War, which achieved nothing except misery and muddle. The League may be exasperating many people all over the fractious world, but it is not killing anybody for the glory of civilisation. A special protest has been made at Geneva about the League’s cost of maintaining the International Labour Office. An Australian delegate—a wealthy man of Melbourne, member of the Victorian Legislative Council—pounced on the budget concerning the ornate Labour office at Geneva, and made a persuasive plea for the rigorous practice of economy. It is true that the wonderful Palace of Industry there provokes an impression which seeks expression in a challenging criticism. The bulk of the hall, which stretches with its three storeys of fifty windows each along the shores of Lake Leman, overwhelms visitors and baffles even the most competent observers to find an adequate description. Pylons guard the doorway of the palace, which looks like a Hindu temple, while within a multitude of workers, who perspire only at tennis or at rowing on the lovely lake, essay the supertask of preparing the whole world for industrial peace and social happiness. There are stained-glass windows, Gobelin tapestry, magnificent cloisonne vases, gorgeous carpets, and lofty pillars of oak—all gifts from ardent nations —hut if Labour ever should set its standard of living and comfort by the glories of the Geneva office, then Capital everywhere may turn its face to the wall and give up the ghost. The Geneva hive of diplomatic industry may yet produce much honey, but so far its product has been an expensive wax. Still, the Australian delegate might have chosen a more impressive illustration for his argument than a tearful reference to State deficits in Australia and the Australian horror in being compelled to practise economy. As a matter of fact, the Geneva Labour Office recently provided statistics showing that if Australia abandoned industrial war it would not require to suffer economy.