30 JANUARY 1932, Page 1

News of the Week

International Affairs

AS we survey the world from China to Peru this week, we find little that is not gloomy. The economy of the world seems to have been undermined, to be tottering to ,its fall in spite of a little patching done here, a bit of shoring up done there. The solid work needed to renew a fum base on which it can stand with any prospect of security seems to be impeded by eternal political ob- struction. Even fear of catastrophe fails as a stimulus to self-preservation, for it is obscured by fears of smaller dangers and even of bogies which a sane world would recognize as themselves easy to intimidate or even to :brush aside as insubstantial phantasies. It is, however, a time of international meetings, and we should have lost all faith if we did not expect some good to come out of them. The Council of the League of Nations is in session at Geneva. The Disarmament Conference is due to meet -there on Tuesday next. The Berlin Committee of bankers and others has done its work over the so-called " Stand- still " Agreement, but the Conference of Governments which we hoped would have met at Lausanne before now still hangsfire amid growing disappointment in this country and Germany‘