appear to be an impossible ideal. The suggestion that entry to the League should be denied Russia Seems to be based upon the idea that unless a nation or a man is god fearing, it and he are not fit to associate with their fellows, And yet there are numbers of sen without belief in God whose lives and characters are as immaculate as those who have the benefit which faith in a_ divinity undoubtedly confers. That may even yet prove to be true of nations, and while the outlook from point of view, so far as concerned, may not be particularly bright, it' would undoubtedly be wholly irrational to seck to exclude it from the councils of the world merely on that one fact.
Much of the weakness of the League is due to the fact that so many important nations are content to remain outside membership, or are on the verge of relinquisling it, Another contributing factor has been the failure of Britain to ensure that the ideas which underlaid the formation of the League should prevail. this connection an" interesting point is made by Professor Zimmem, who in discussing the question of whether there was or was not an Empire foreign policy. has this to say with regard to the position of Great Britain vis-a-vis of the League:— fight for the existence of the League to the very last ditch, The (dealism which is the motive power many of the British charac~ teristics demands that every possible service should be rendered to the cause of amity between the nations. That Britain's views have not prevailed in the chambers of Geneva may be true, but is it to be believed that that' would provide any moral justification for torpedoing the, League which indeed would be' the effect of Britain's withdrawal? Tt is the duty of the Churches to stand fairly and squarely behind the whole movement, to spare no endeavour to make it the success should be, and must be if humanity is not to be reduced to state of chaos which passeth th comprehension of man to template. That one possible mem= ber of the League may be ungodly does of, surely, deprive the rest fof the world from accepting what-fever ce-operation it may have to offer. To support such a tention would be to argue that 'a churchman should not ce-operate with an atheist in endeavouring to avert a common peril, Stated in such simple terms the proposal is hopelessly absurd. To seek to exclude the ungodly, to punish them for their failure to believe, may have sounded very well in the days when religion assumed aspects not altogether to be commended in these more tolerant times, but the fact is that to do so would be to betray the very principles upon which religion itself is founded.
(Continved on page 237.)
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.