Mr. Walter Runciman foresees cheerfully the possibilities of a real improvement in international trade and consequently a further strengthening of the process of recovery in Great Britain, as well as in other countries. It is admitted that some of the improvement is due to the general move toward rearmament to which the British Government is making a belated but impressive contribution. The decline of the League's authority may be openly welcomed by its opponents, but they might do well to note that that catastrophe coincides with a wide-spread sense of insecurity all over the World. It follows therefore that so long as the principles of the Covenant. were thought to have general acceptance from the signatories to that document, fear of an international conflagration was in abeyance. The urge toward rearma~ ment has progressively increased with the progressive weakening of the League's ascendancy. In Great Britain and France consideration has been given to the revival of the League by way of reform, but the sinister circumstance that Signor Mussolini was an early champion of that proposal must receive due assessment, In Great Britain, at all events, there has been a rigorous examination of the cause of the League's failure to enforce the Covenant in the Abyssinian crisis. The conclusion provisionally drawn is that the Covenant was not at fault. The fact is that the League has been composed of members—who, patently, were not prepared to act in the spirit of the Covenant. They clung precariously, to the letter and when retention of that position demanded full expression of the spirit, they were found wanting. It has been pointed out that the attack on Abyssinia and the circumstances of the subsequent annexation of that country provided the clearest cut example of conduct against which every member of the League—every signatory of the Covenant—had solemnly pledged complete collective opposition. The pledge was faintly honoured and failure followed.
The only charge against the League to possess the semblance of validity, is that the Covenant in its hands fad come to be a usurer's bond for the strict preservation of the status quo. 'The charge may hold good against the League' but only because its members failed to honour the spirit of the: Covenant. Within the provisions of that document was ample scope for correcting inequalities and adapting it to the ever changing conditions of international relationships. Impatience and impetuosity, no doubt, were disposed to argue that the 'League would not move quickly enough to give confidence in its ability to redress insistent] grievances, The question is whether there was enough' genuine loyalty to the creed of the Covenant to fest the justice of that argument. Fortunately there is no need to single out individual members for blame; hardly a single nation can be acquitted of a greater or less degree of faintheartedness, varying, from deliberate sabotage to dilatory ambiguity. Reform of the League by manipulation of the Covenant, will not retrieve this disaster. The criminal cannot be turned into honest citizen by changing the law 30 a3 to legalize his activities. For the moment the best that can be done, to prevent complete destruction of the League is to devise means for keeping the structure in existence so that it is again ready for use when nations are sincerely.
tune with the principles enshrined in the Covenant. The present collapse has for the time being set on foot elaborate preparations for world rearmament, the ultimate outcome of which must. be a devastating catastrophe unless, the meantime, the forces of true international ce-operation can be rehabilitated and given their proper overriding authority. Weak as the League is to-day, it has this meal culpable strength: the vehement desire among the masses of civiliza~ tion for avoidance of internecine warfare. Paradoxically this desire has to submit to the process. arming in order to preserve its integrity. That gives the measure of the confusion into which the world has been plunged by the recklessness of economic nationalism.
Is there any satisfaction to be gained from improving trade con-Gitions if it be found that they [depend ultimately on the encouragement of policies which, after a suitable period of balancing and manceuvre, must culminate in war? Is it not asking the world to appease its hunger with Dead Sea fruit? International accord depends on political confidence for the establishment of which true economic ce-operation is essential. The prospect of living dangerously has to be accepted by the generation of to-day and by. its successors as they arise, but the dangerous living need not be such as to make suicide the certain termination, The world has reached a point at'which long-standing theories of political thought have to be ruthlessly scrutinized. In every country some much-cherished doctrine has gone by the board in the desperate effort. to cope with the perplexities of a distraught economic policy. Recovery of equilibrium may eventually sought in keeping to the broad lines which are governed by verities unshakable whatever the age may be: the security to be found in fidelity to the pledged word and in ce-operation such as is instinct in the primitive community from time immemorial. Tt well may be that in the development of international ce-operation for economic advancement, the political problem may find solution. The madness of the present retirement of individual nations behind tariff and other artificially constructed barriers cannot continue without a world explosion. That has been evident in the actions of the nations on whom economic restrictions have most hardly pressed. Tf the League's, machinery could be turned to this purpose it might automatically provide the means for eventually restoring the political authority which is now adrift. Economic progress and political concord can bbe secured only by such collective effort. Tt is time the decks: were cleared for action to that end, SeveN Japanese newspaper men who cover the activities of the Tokyo Foreign OMice, arrived in Tientsin from Shanghai by the Tsinpu Rallway recently for an inspection of conditions in North-China. The party planned to proceed to Peiping after spending two days in Tientsin, and visit Mukden, Hsinking and Harbin on its return trip.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.