News of the Week
THERE is little reason to doubt that by the end of this week the Assembly of the League of Nations will have adopted without a dissentient vote, apart from that of Japan, the report on the Manchurian situation approved by its Committee of Nineteen ten days. ago. Though this development has been long delayed, it is well that its importance, now that it has happened, should be appreciated. The League, it cannot too often be insisted, is no abstract entity, but an instrument to express and apply the co-operative decisions of the League's Members. It is the British Government,- the r French Government, the Italian Government and the rest which, after full Cabinet deliberation, drafted the conclusions which the Corn- mittee of Nineteen reached. Loose talking about the League wanting the British Government to do this or that simply darkens counsel. The League is the British Government and some fifty or more others, and there cannot be one British policy in Geneva and another in Whitehall. The delays have been deplorable, but it is something that on a difficult and complex issue League States should have found it possible to range themselveS in solid unity. In pre-League days the Sino-Japanese affair might have split the world.
