The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1924-12-25
League of Nations
BY HENRY WOOD

Nations as marking the definite turn
ing point in the development and
growth of that institution.
From an experimental organization,
the league, after a five years test in
which it was entrusted only with hand
ling what might be termed minor
international question, has, during the
past year, thrown off its swaddling
clothes and begun the handling of the
most vital international problems and
questions.
This change, according to Leaguers,
has not come about so mitch from
within the League itself, as from the
attitude Of the nations composing the
League
The League can only be what the
governments forming it choose to
make it.
If, up until the past year, the League
did not have chance of trying it's
hand at the settlement Of the big ma
jor problems in international life, it
was only because the nations in the
League took their business somewhere
else, or endeavored to settle their
problems alone.
Throughout the past year, however,
there has been a marked tendency on
the part of the great powers to bring,
as they are pledged to do under the
covenant, their big international
questions to the League for settle
ment
This tendency eliminated in the
visit to Geneva by Herriot and Mac
nAno1I he 10 ho
Leagues of the whole problem of arbi-
tration, security and disarmament.
Credit for the consolidation thus Civ
en- to the Leagues position is, accord
/ ing to Leaguers, due perhaps more to
the change in the French attitude to-
wards the League than to that of the
English.
England has always been the first
nation in bringing it's problems to the
League for settlement. AS a conse-
quence increased support of the
League by England was only a cen
tinuation of its already established
policy. England's dispute with Egypt
has been informally submitted to the
League.
But the decision of France to throw
the whole question of it's national Sc
curity which is conceded to be the
most important problem in European
affairs today, onto the League for
settlement changed definitely the po-
sition of the League in international
affairs.
That France intends to continue this
policy, and intends to count on the
League not only for its national Sc
curity, but for the future settlement
of other equally as important ques-
tiens, has also been definitely init
mated. During the September Assem-
bly,, BRAND and other members of the
French delegation proclaimed from the
tribune of Geneva that in the future
the League will be called upon to
settle the great financial, economical
and social problems which are already
beginning to assert themselves as-the
great points of divergence in inter
national affairs.
Just as the League has been called
upon to prepare a basis for national
security for all nations, she will be
called on, they declared, to establish
basis for pacts of economic, financial
and social security, for the entire
world.
Enforced Arbitration.
In developing and launching the past
year, the principle of enforced obliga-
tory arbitration as a means of settling
all international disputes, instead of
by wars in the past, the League feels
that it has established the basis for
an entirely new epoch in the worlds
history, and an epoch in which the
League will play leading part. While
it is conceived that years may elapse
before the entire world can be brought
over to abolishing war entirely and
accepting the principle of obligatory
arbitration, Leaguers are convinced
that this principle has been definitely
proclaimed for all time to come, and
that through the League, it will even
tually work the greatest change that
has ever been accomplished in the his
tory of the relations Of nations.
Even before France and England
came to Geneva in September, however,
with the predominating European ques-
tion of national security, the early
part of the year had already register
Su market CSuuSuCy Oh Inc pdAb VI
the big powers to begin at last to en-
trust their greatest international prob
lens to the League for settlement.
This change in attitude, or rather of
habit, is attributed to two causes, first
the fact that the League itself had
gradually come to establish confidence
that it was an organism that could be
counted on not only for impartiality
but for respect of sovereign rights;
and, secondly, the settlement of the
Preparations problem.
With the question of PREPARATIONS the
dominating international problem ever
since the close of the war, and with
the French refusing to allow this prob
lem to come before the League for
settlement, the latter was obliged vir-
tually to stand aside and take second
place until the problem of PREPARATIONS
was out of the way. With the settle
ment under the Dawes plan, however,
there has ever since been a more
marked tendency on the part of the
great powers to let the League play
the role assigned to it in the peace
treaties and in the covenant, as the
one international organism for the
settlement of disputes between ma
tions.
Military Control Assumed.
Of the great problems that have
since been entrusted to the League