LEAGUE OF NATIONS UNION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 January 1940, Page 9

LEAGUE OF NATIONS UNION

INTENSIVE EDUCATIONAL CAMPAIGN NEEDED. MASTERTON BRANCH MEETING. At a meeting of the council of the Masterton branch of the League of Nations Union, held on Thursday, it was decided that Mr R. I. Wadhams, and either Miss I. Tankersley or Mrs Engstrom be provisionally appointed delegates to the Summer School to be held at the Hutt on January 31 and February 1. Any members of the branch are entitled to attend if due notice is given, but only the delegates may vote.

Mrs T. R. Barrer, who presided, stressed the importance of not only keeping the League of Nations Union in existence, but of increasing its membership, and carrying on an intensive education campaign. It was now definitely acknowledged that present war conditions were due to a lack of loyalty to the League of Nations on the part of member countries. Now, however, the peoples of the' world, belligerents and neutrals alike, were already looking ahead to that time when a constructive peace would be arranged, and acknowledging the necessity for some form of international organisation such as the League of Nations to carry out this purpose.

It was therefore, Mrs Barrer said, more necessary than ever that an intensive educational campaign should be carried out concerning the vital principles .underlying international cooperation for world peace. In this campaign the League of Nations Union had a large part to play, and it was more than ever necessary that members should not only take every opportunity of educating themselves, but should bring in fresh members and subscriptions. The League of Nations Union paper, “Headway” provided a source of■ enlightened articles by the world’s greatest scholars, politicians, economists, clergy and scientists —in short by leaders of world thought. “Some day,” says a recent edition of “Headway,” “peace will return. Even today no service to humanity can be more valuable than honest thought given to the building of an ordered world. Somewhere must be saved a meeting place of minds. Some means must be kept for communicating between the leaders of collective sanity and their many but scattered supporters. The results of hard thinking and close, eager discussion must be published in order that the nation may come to know of them.” To raise funds for the branch it was decided to hold a jumble sale on February 9.

The treasurer, Mr G. Sykes, stated that only a small proportion of subscriptions had been received. Members are asked to forward these to Mr Sykes as soon as possible.