WHAT KIND OF LEAGUE?
THE debates that have taken place at Geneva this week have brought to a head, though not to a conclusion; discussions which have engaged Ministers and the public in most countries of Europe regarding the future of the League of Nations. There is, of course, a preliminary question—whether the League shall have a future at all. Germany and Italy, having withdrawn from the League themselves, regard. it as unwarrantable pre- sumption that the institution should survive without them, and Lord Londonderry, judging from opinions he is reported to have expressed to the Berliner Tageblatt, shares their, view. Fortunately, Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Eden take a very different line from one who was, but no longer is, their colleague. The considered attitude of the Cabinet towards the League of Nations was defined at Geneva last week by the Foreign Minister in a speech in which sane idealism and a consciousness of hard realities were fittingly proportioned. Mr. Eden's main statement—that His Majesty's Government's faith in the aims and ideals that inspired the League remains unshaken—was terse and unequivocal, but it is possible to believe in the aims that inspire an organisation without believing that the organisation will ever realise them. If it never, will, there may be little reason for preserving it. British Ministers, however, take no pessimistic view ; on the contrary, "they still believe that one day, possibly with more or less adaptation to circumstances, the League will become the universal organisation which its founders contemplated." Till then their watchword is; in effect, Carry on.
That view was endorsed by France, Russia, Belgium and most of the other members of the Council. Poland, as usual, maintained an attitude intelligible in a State living in constant fear of being overlain by one of two powerful neighbours, and the Chinese delegate betrayed, still More intelligibly, the bitterness with which contem- platiOn of the inoperative Article XVI inevitably fills him at a moment when his country is left to face unaided a peculiarly brutal and lawless aggression. That brings the vital problem facing League members at once to the fore. Is the League to make any attempt to frustrate an aggressor and defend the victim of aggression, or is it to rely on moral suasion alone and find its mission exhausted when moral suasion is derided and defied ? Was it right or wrong in opposing Italy in the interests of Abyssinia? Was it right or wrong in failing to press that opposition to a point at which it would have been effective in checking the aggressor but might have precipi- tated a general war ? With the record of the Abyssinian failure behind it, can the League affect to take Article XVI, with its commitment to immediate economic sanctions and to potential military sanctions, seriously any longer? Finally, if Article XVI is not going to be observed, ought it not in common honesty to be expunged from the Covenant ?
The answer to none of these questions is simple. That the principle which dictated the framing of the Covenant and the incorporation of Article XVI in it was sound need not be questioned—how sound was con- vincingly demonstrated by Sir Norman Angell in an admirable letter in Monday's Manchester Guardian, in which he contended that in another war this country would urgently need allies, which the operation of Article XVI would provide, and that an equal need would be "a good peace," which the observance of League of Nations principles would ensure.' That is true, and it is one of many arguments for Article XVI as it was conceived and drafted—in a weaker form than a British Foreign Office committee suggested—,-at Paris in 1919. But this is not 1919. Before that year was out it had become clear that the United States would not in any near future become a member of the League of. Nations ; at the end of eighteen years she is as far from that as ever. In 1932 Japan, in 1933 Germany, in 1937 Italy, gave notice of resignation from the League. That Italy nominally remains a member till her two years' notice has expired is immaterial. Those three Great Powers are today, outside the League. Not only that, they are associated in the triple Anti-Commintern Pact, which may or may' not contain secret clauses, but which manifestly contains implications, the nature and extent of which must be a matter of speculation. As lately as Monday of this week Admiral Leahy, Chief of Naval Operations in the United States,, referred to the three anti-Communist Powers as "one powerful armament bloc." If there is any real danger that action by League States against any one of these Powers would involve them in action against all three, it is not conceivable that countries like Poland or Holland or Belgium or Jugoslavia or the Scandinavian States should be ready to stand committed to such action in advance. Nor, notoriously, is France or Britain.
Is, then, the League to give notice here and now to all potential aggressors that whatever crimes they commit they need expect no interference by League States ? That, which is what the formal abrogation of Article XVI would involve, would mean a fatal retreat. It may not be certain that the League would act in a given case ; but let it at least not be certain that it would refrain from acting. There may be many cases— indeed, any case likely to arise would be such—in which joint action will have to be taken by several States, and there will be great advantage in taking it under an article of the League Covenant, both as evidence of individual disinterestedness, and because action under Article XVI, which presupposes a refusal by the aggressor State to submit to some process of peaceful settlement, implies as logical consequence resort, if the aggressor is defeated, to that form of settlement rather than his subjection to a victor's peace.
For these and other reasons which could be cited those States are undoubtedly right which have contended at Geneva this week that this is not the moment for either rescinding or radically revising Article XVI. The hope of some day achieving the universality of the League, "possibly with more or less adaptation to circumstances," as Mr. Eden put it, has not been abandoned. The dictatorships are brief growths as yet ; all of them are quite as likely to wither as to flourish. Even if they flourish it need not be through war—war, indeed, would be as fatal to them as to any State engaged in it—and international co-operation with them, whatever their form of government, is by no means to be ruled out, difficult though it is today. That the definite obliga- tions imposed by the Sanctions article should simply be tacitly ignored is plainly -unsatisfactory, but there could be no serious difficulty about framing a formula which would provide that while the application of sanctions by a number of League States in concert would always be legitimate in the circumstances to which Article XVI applies, the obligation on every State to take part in them was temporarily suspended. That would simply regularise what is, in fact, the present position. It would satisfy the smaller States and assuage their discontents. And it would in no way diminish the value or efficacy of the League as an instrument of peaceful and constructive co-operation. The salient fact that has emerged from the Geneva discussions is that hardly a single State of any consequence is ready to see the principle of collective security abandoned—even if the principle is not working today—and the League reduced to a mere consultative body which, when crimes are being committed, must confine itself to sitting back and looking on.
Previous page
