28 APRIL 1939, Page 2

Lord Baldwin on the League The three lectures with which

Lord Baldwin inaugurated the lectureship founded in memory of Sir Robert Falconer at Toronto University were characterised by a wise humanity. The third and last was concerned partly with the importance of the League of Nations. Half of the power and influence of the League vanished in America's absence, and to enforce the Treaty of Versailles in an atmosphere of mingled victory and defeat was a more difficult task than to sign it. But in spite of the present position, said Lord Baldwin, he believed that the theory of the Covenant was admirable and the machinery of the Secretariat efficient. "The theory of the Covenant has proved too exacting and exalted for European practice, but, unless mankind is for ever to be subject to the law of the jungle, we shall have to come back to the Covenant, or something like it, again and again." Lord Baldwin could have chosen no more fitting moment for such an affirmation, and the weight of his en- lightened authority lends a special importance to such a pronouncement.