Woman Champion For The League of Nations

Radio Record, 8 April 1938, Page 40

Woman Champion For The League of Nations

NE of the best-accredited woman speakers to come over the air in New Zealand recently is Miss Kathleen D. Courtney, of England, who has travelled through New Zealand as advocate for the League of Nations, under the auspices of the New Zealand Y.W.C.A. She left Wellington on Tuesday to continue her tour in Australia. Miss Courtney came, perhaps, at a rather inauspicious-or it might be auspicious-time, for she was in Wellington when Hitler made bis march into Austria. and alarmed the world by the success of methods so strongly in contrast to League principles. Miss Courtney sees the League as the white hope of a civilisation toppling on the brink of downfall, and Hitler’s action in the eyes of many people must have given substantial.support for her prophesies of doom. Lecture halls in the centres where she spoke were crammed with listeners, and she undoubtedly won over converts, or re-conyerts, to the League. Her contention is that the League’s machinery for the policing of the world is adequate and workable, but the non-co-operative spirit of the nations themselves is the real cause of its failures. This spirit that militates against internationalism is traced by Miss Courtney through the League delegates and their Governments down to the people themselves. She aims ‘at persuading public opinion, in the Dominions no less than Great Britain, so that democratic Governments will have no "alternative but to rally wholeheartedly round the League. However controversial Miss Courtney’s subject may be, she proved herself. both on the lecturing platform and over the air, to be a fluent and well-informed speaker ‘with a good grip of political movements and their root causes in history. She gave remarkably clear expositions of the international situation, with sidelights on League doings that are often overlooked. Particularly over the air, her delivery was a little too drily matter-of-fact and her material too uncoloured to be moving. In her crusading, cogency is the chosen weapon rather than an appeal to the emotions. Nevertheless, her visit has been a definite stimulus, and the Y.W.C.A. may be congratulated upon their initiative in arranging the tour of so renowned a speaker for peace. Miss Courtney is a member of the national executive of the League of Nations and for ten years was chairman of the British section of the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom. She was one of the founders of the Women’s International League, and of the British Women’s Peace Crusade. She became prominent during the women’s suffrage movement in England and is still closely interested in women’s political rights,