LEAGUE OF NATIONS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 September 1938, Page 5

LEAGUE OF NATIONS

OPENING OF ASSEMBLY MR JORDAN'S PRESIDENTIAL , SPEECH. HOPES THAT PEACE MAY BE PRESERVED. (Recd This Day,. 11.35 a.m.) GENEVA, September 12. Opening the League of Nations Assembly, Mr W. J. Jordan (New Zealand High Commissioner) said the world was not free from warlike sentiment, fears and even actual strife; yet people without exception first and foremost desired peace. The world since the war had chosen the League as a route of approach to the unanimity rare in human affairs. They could now see the confusion following the abandonment by some countries of faith in the Covenant.

Geneva had not recently been the scene of appeasements, but the Assembly was happy wherever peace served by acts of good faith, neighbourly conduct and resistance to aggression. Intolerance born of fear and injustice was practised by those who yesterday themselves were its victims. Common sense and mutual help were needed to build a better order. One form of warfare whose indiscriminate barbarity was universally condemned was aerial bombardment. “Will not the nations agree to its abolition.” Mr Jordan asked.

What happened in Europe, he added, was of the greatest concern to every country in the world. “We hope peace will be preserved,” he concluded. “If it is violated, it will not be possible, for the violator's to count on the neutrality even of the countries that appear most remote.”

NEW PRESIDENT MR DE VALERA ELECTED. WORLD CONFERENCE ADVOCATED. (Recd This Day, 10.5 a.m.) GENEVA, September 12. Mr E. De Valera has been elected President of the Assembly, by 39 votes to 3. Mr De Valera, in urging a world peace conference, expressed the hope that the. assembly would close with immediate dangers past and the way paved for a conference based on justice to all peoples, which was possible before a war but almost impossible after a war.