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Show THE CITIZEN (MMmiM&G!!lnl 'P To the Editor of The Citizen, Salt Lake City, Utah. Dear Sir: I . . am interested in an article on national affairs in your edition of March 16. This is so full of misunderstandings as to the functions of the League of Nations that your readers will wish to know the facts. Your correspondent speaks of the internationalist who believes that Uncle Sam should be governed by the League of Nations. As a matter of fact the League of Nations does not govern anyone. It is simply a group of sovereign states coming together in conference once a year (in the assembly) to talk over affairs of mutual interest. Since it is pretty hard for them all to come together oftener than once a year, fourteen of them (five large nations and nine small ones in the Council) meet four additional times a year for the same purpose. A group of experts (the Secretariat) is maintained at Geneva to advise the representatives of the nations as to feasibility and progress of the plans that they propose for cooperation with each other. No nation is subsidiary to the League. Except in routine matters of procedure no action can be taken in the Assembly or in the Council without a unanimous vote. Alarmists have frightened our American public with the story that our soldiers could be ordered by the League to stop a war in Persia or Turkey or elsewhere. That seems ridiculous if one knows the facts. All that the League can do is, at the very most, to declare one nation an aggressor, leaving each other nation perfectly free to take such action under the sanction articles as it. wishes. a This is exactly the principal that to our Senate approved eighty-fiv- e one when it passed the Kellogg Pact, denying the benefits of this treaty to any nation who breaks the pact. Your correspondent speaks of the League as a European League. On the contrary, it is a world League. It is a group of almost all the nations on earth trying to correct evils wherever they occur, such as the opium evil in China and India, or the slave and liquor trade in Africa. Last year it was quick to remind Paraguay and Bolivia, of their solemn covenants not to go to war with each other (or anybody else) until three months have been given for careful investigation. Of the fourteen pres-emembers of the Council, eight countries are in Europe, two in Asia, nt !ffl 15 SI HSfflgOU and four in America (Canada, Chile, Cuba, Venezuela). Your correspondent raises the old argument that 'the United States is more effective for peace, outside of the League than it would be as a member. On the contrary, careful students of internatonal affairs feel that our absence from the League is the principle cause of the hesitation of the nations to disarm, and is costing the taxpayers of the world, ourselves included, billions of dollars each year. From a selfish point of view are we wise to cut ourselves off from the conferences of the fifty-fiv- e great disto nations of the world, meeting cuss such problems as world health, tariffs, economic problems, international loans, changing the calendar, and innumerable other matters of vi" tal importance? We are lending many billions of dollars to the other nations. Eventually we shall see the necessity of joining with them in discussing these affairs that affect world markets. It is not altruism but plain common sense that will make us sooner or later join in these Kffflti2151S League today, with reasonable reservations on the sanction articles not really necessary but valuable as making our attitude clear to the world, we should commit ourselves to the following ma j or obligations : (1) To pay about $500,000 per year as our share in the expenses of all these studies and investigations in world cooperation. This is about the cost of one gun on the new cruisers ! The United States is now getting much of the benefits of these studies and conferences without paying . . for them. Is that good sportsman-ship- ? To reduce armaments tq the lowest point consistent with national safety. (3) To respect the territorial integrity and political independence of the other nations. (4) To submit any threatening dispute either to arbitration or to inquiry by the Council and not to go to war until three months have elapsed after such inquiry or arbitration, and not to go to war at all against a nation which lives up to the arbi- (2) conferences. Your correspondent quoted only a tration award or unanimous decision of the Council, the two parties to part of Mr. Coolidges February 22 address. Let me quote further: the dispute not voting. (5) Not to give our help to a nation which breaks these covenants. He (Washington) therefore warned us in his Farewell Address to beware of permanent and political The phrase 'entangling alliances. alliances is not from him but from Jefferson. In the thought of that day an alliance meant the banding together of two or more nations for offensive and defensive purposes aganist certain other, nations, either IT HAD expressed or implied. NO REFERENCE TO AN ASSOCIATION OF PRACTICALLY ALL NATIONS IN AN AT- To register all treaties with the League secretary. Are not these six obligations ones that every red blooded American, proud of his country and anxious for her future, may well support ? And let us remember that unless we have this machinery for peace, and unless we learn how to use it and develop it so that another world war cannot come then inevitably the civilization of our children will perish. Yours very truly, Philip C. Nash, Dean of Antioch College, and Director of the League of Nations Association. (6) ... TEMPT TO RECOGNIZE THEIR COMMON INTERESTS AND DISCHARGE THEIR COMMON OBLIGATIONS. Let us talk facts and reason clearly when we think about the League of Nations. If we should join the Chicago now has a bank which may make for the bandits union have more and bigger It is reported that -- billon dollar it necessary out there to trucks. Calvin Coolidge will buy the automobile which lie used during the last years of his residence in the White House. Well, if he gets it at the right price it ought to be a bargain as its our guess it has never been driven over forty. . |