THE FUTURE OF THE LEAGUE
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
(Corrrspondents are requested to keep their letters as bad as is reasonably possible. The most suitable length is that 6f one of our "News of the Wee*" paragraphs. Signed letters arc given a preference over those bearing a pseudonym.—Ed. THE SrEer.vrou.] [To the Editor of THE Sem- T:vroa.] .;tic. --The future of the Leagtie depends upon the validity of assumptions much more fundamental than the ideas of " collective defence " and " a like-minded society," to which Lord Lytton and Sir Alfred Zimmern refer. There are at least two aasumptions on which any League system must rest. The first is that there is a moral obligation to keep Treaties (pada sant servanda). It is quite useless to " amend " the Covenant or " reform " the League. if any Treaty which a military autocracy, holding membership in the League. finds. inconvenient, may lx. disregarded by it. The second assumption is that civilised governments are unwilling to use war for their own national advantage. This conception may be new ; and it is certainly not clearly grasped by all the governments which have signed the Kellogg Pact. But it was assumed, when the Covenant was signed. that the members of the League at least were unwilling to use war in the old "Roman " way.
In the present situation it is not the Covenant nor the League system which has " failed." The fundamental assumptions of all civilised intercourse between governments have been broken. Many governments have broken Treaties. . But in our own days the three greatest military autocracies have actually proclaimed their belief that national interest ought to take precedence, in their policies, of moral obligations implied in signed Treaties. The problem of policy which we have now to consider, therefore, is much more fundamental than can be solved by a discussion of the Covenant or the
Previous page
