5 APRIL 1930, Page 2

Great Britain is deeply and seriously committed— perhaps wrongly—to such

concerted measures of war- prevention as are laid down in Article 16 of the Covenant. That being so, the fundamental issue is : What does Article 16 mean ? Or, to put it in another. way : What is the practical value 'Of that Article in the conditions of 1930? We cannot resist the conclusion that the Committee which met at Geneva to bring the Covenant into harmony with the Paris Pact ought not merely to have tried to eliminate from the Covenant the resort to private war, but (as Mr. George Cockerill has suggested in the Times) ought to have amended the Covenant by eliminating Article 16.