Jan, 13. di ion of the Manchurian The prospect of bringing the problem to another stage in it chequered cancer at Geneva has stimulated renewed speculation in the cables, There is again talk of a breakdown of. the League, Hints are thrown out that this or that decision will be unpalatable to Japan. Mr. Punch, with that happy, malice-free, humour which makes his political comment so arresting, has lately pictured the League as a school-mistress, pointing to the Lytton Report on the blackboard and confronted by a@ pleasantly but firmly protesting schoolboy, Japan, who says "If you go on calling me a naughty boy, I shall leave the class"—or words to that effect. Recent developments round the Great Wall have revived a positive orgy of guessing regarding future events in Jehol and Peking. The obsecurity veiling Japanese inten. tions has encouraged the imagitation to. work overtime, While it may be freely admitted that the Japanese themselves may be no surer of the ce sequences of their latest actions than they seemed to be thi time last year in Manchuria itself, it is quite possible to believe that reports of their favouring a revival of the Dragon Throne in Peking are as novel to them as to the ingenious sponsors of so mechanical an extension of Mr. Henry Pu Yi's recovered prominence. They probably are well aware of the fact that, while nothing, is impossible in China, there are many solid reasons for refusing, just now at all events, to substitute romance for the prosaic actualities of present-day political thought in this country. All this embroidery of the topic which is absorbing attention in the Far East and those who are staging the Far Eastern drama at Geneva, is attractive as em-It is unsatisfying in other respects. It seems to take the mind away from the fundamental issues which are vital to the League and to the nations composing the League. Even if the hostilities in the Shanhaikuan area should presently develop yet another political upheaval in the North and a dramatic disturbance of the existing conditions, they would in themselves be negligible beside consideration of the main problem now before Geneva.
Sir John Simon, in no uncertain terms, last month, asserted the faith of Great Britain; 'Wye must stand by the prine ciples: of the League and must promote conciliation.'
M. Paul-Boncour, who, since then, has become Premier of France, had preceded Sir John in reaffirming France's adhere ence to the Covenant. France has recently given yet another emphasis to that loyalty. The Covenant of the League, in fact, as Sir John Simon characterically observed is the constitutional law of the Great Powers as well as of the smaller States. Japan has vigorously asserted her belief in the League, in spite of fitful semiofficial utterances which have inspired Mr. Punch's gentle satire quoted above. The Lytton Report has provided the League with valuable data on which conciliation can be based. This wealth of profession and avowal should give due scope for statesmanship. There should be no hesitation in bracing the League up to the responsibilities of its position. Those who have vitwed the oratorical struggle - at Geneva as some sort of a sporting spectacle, which will establish either the turpitude of Japan or the moral delinquency ies of China, must be allowed to take their pleasures in their own way. Their discomfiture or de-Hight is quite irrelevant to the main issue. Nor is the question lof the League's badness or goodness to be determined by any prolongation of the contest. The League is being tested but, so long as it holds fast to the principles of its Covenant, its failure {to solve the Manchurian problem is not really the crucial factor its case. Composed as it is Jof four-fifths of what is to-day known as civilisation, it is pected by means of its membership to vindicate that civilisation's fundamental creed, which, to reiterate the words' of Sit John Simon is based on the "constitutional law" of the Covenant. Not lightly did the Foreign [Secretary make that statement. He knew, as one of the foremost lawyers of the day and as the Ichief spokesman abroad of a ni tion, then about to give historic proof of its belief in the sanctity' of contracts, that the League] must, for the sake of the civilisation which it so largely represented, stand firm for the security of international agreements.
Lord Lytton has said that the League is the life-line of civilisation; and the lifeline of the League is that respect for the signed and sealed agreements solemnly reached between its} members. That is why' the Report of the Commission over which Lord Lytton presided laid! so much stress on the need for} arriving at a modus _vivendi rather than on the formulation of indictments. Conciliation is a word which can be misused, The only form of conciliation which the League can take into account, must safeguard the world against disregard of pledges and pacts. Otherwise there is danger of! gradual or perhaps rapid disinter gration of the whole fabric which distinguishes the to-day from the inchoate mass} of peoples of ages now deemed remote and outgrown. Sir John Simon's return to his own country to-day, after @ recovery from the strain of his recent illness, provided an object-lesson to those who are viewing next week's discussions at Geneva with imperfect! appreciation of the issues at stake. His aeroplane, arriving] over a befogged England, had to circle hovering above the aerodrome until guiding rockets were fired to lead it safely to the ground. Too thickly has the fog of apprehension, prejudice, alarm and mistrust, shrouding the council chamber Jat Geneva. Rockets are needed to clear the way to the solid ground of observance of good faith and international concord. Whatever measures may be necessary in the long run to assist Japan and China—separately or together—to arrive at the solution of their own special] difficulties, they are not the urgent concern of the League. What is urgent is an early gesture of self-confidence in the shape of practical allegiance to the Covenant. This implies no adoption of punitive action against one party or the other. It simply means consolidation of jai members of the League in a solemn determination to make fast that lifeline which is in peril of being lost. Diversion of the} energies of the delegates to arfgument and counter-argument regarding the merits of the claims of the two parties to the dispute is apt to degenerate into Jo dissipation of strength sadly required for the cementing of Iworld relationships. Unless the drifting of the League's barque is checked by the firm hand lof a helmsman who receives the danger of being carried out of the, charter course, catastrophe is inevitable. Tt. will not be catastrophe, for China or. for Japan exclusively but a catastrophe stretching far beyond the ikon of Changehun, Nanking or Shanhaikuan. It will be nothing less than the break-up of the Jworld as constituted to-day. For, without faith in the word' land the bond of 2 nation, civilsation cannot maintain its
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.