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Show I LEAGUE OF .NATIONS I It is now nine months since the I league cf nations, provided for in j I the peace treaty, was officially con-1 istituted. During all that time' the i . Council of the League -has been in j existence and ready to perform its j functions. I Some forty nations have given in' I their adhearence to the organiza- J tion; China and the United States ! are the only nations of importance; j that are eligible for membership and that still remain, outside. It is interesting in-teresting to consider what the Lea-; j gue has actually accomplished so j far. and what are the prosepcts of the future. j ' In the field of international politics, poli-tics, and as an agency for prevent-' ing war, the League has disappoint-! ed those who expected it to exercise i real authority from the very beginning. begin-ning. Persia appealed to the Council Coun-cil to protect it. a.rainst invasion from Russia, but it does not appear that I the Council was able to take any ae-i ae-i tion that relieved the situation. Pr land and Russit have been fighting I for several months and the League has done nothing to put an end to ! that war or to the other conflicts that are going en in the Near E?f But it must be remembered that Russia and Turkey are not memb-of memb-of the League, and that the present Russian government in particular condemns and denies it. No action that the League could take would be binding on Russia, and no influence it could exert would have any effect at Moscow. The only way it could assert itself would he by force of arms, and the constitution of the League makes the use cf force a last resort, by no means easy of applice.-tion. applice.-tion. Great Britain wan in no position posi-tion to take up arms, for the Labor party , determined that Eng! ","o should not fight openly against the soviet government, threatened a een- eral strike if anything of the kind ! were attempted. . But, though the League has don'-; don'-; little to settle the pressing politic i! , and military issues of the time, it : has not been idle. It has organizer j a secretarial staff of about a hundred trained men, which is hard at work collecting and arranging material that will be needed when the League Lea-gue is ready to take up the definition defini-tion of new international relationships. relation-ships. It has appointed a very remarkable re-markable committee that has drawn up complete plans for a High Court of Industrial Justice, and it has also al-so selected committees to draw nr plans for disarmament, for interna-j interna-j tional organization of health wor'-I wor'-I and for the government of transit on railroads and rivers that traverse; 'various countries. It has distribu!- ed a number of mandates with : what degree of wisdom the future will discover and it has constitute; i i a conference that has under consider e.tion the difficult problems of pres.-i ; ent day international finance. On the whole, the League as an instrument in-strument of politics, as a council of i world government, has so far been of little value. ! As an institution for investigating investigat-ing and considering the conditions', that the nations of the world face ' today and for making useful recommendations recom-mendations toward improving those ' conditions, the Leagu" has already' done much Youth's Companion. j |
