The Reform of the League The first speech (by Seiior
Edwards, of Chile) in the League of Nations Assembly's general discussion on Tuesday, was devoted to the reform of the League itself, and contained one very salutary and one very dangerous proposal. The former—the severance of the League Covenant from the Treaty of Versailles—is not new. Mr. Eden has more than once expressed approval of it, the jurists have declared that no legal difficulties stand in the way, and it may be hoped the Assembly will get the operation started forthwith. The other proposal, that since universality is essential to the League the States that have left it should be asked what revision of the Covenant they require as price of their return, will and should find few supporters. It may well be desirable that when League members have revised their own Covenant there should be informal conversations on the subject with some non- member States, but a preliminary bargain with countries which, like Japan and Italy, have left Geneva because they declined to submit to the rules of life which League States accept, would be both impolitic and repugnant to decency. Let the Assembly cut the Covenant loose from the Treaty of Versailles, let it above all find a way by which the League may be not always—what it must be often—a defender of the status quo, but sometimes an instrument for effecting peaceful change, and it will find itself building for the future much more wisely than by bartering its principles with ex-members.
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