Where Are We Going?

by David Lloyd George

I mean nevertheless to attempt an answer, for much depends on a fearless examination of progress made or missed.

My first answer would be that it is scarcely fair to pose this question just yet. The League was founded only three years ago—much too short a period to afford a test of the working of a gigantic, complex, but very delicate and sensitive human machine. There has been hardly time enough even to catalogue and chart the myriads of nerves that thread its system. You cannot move a finger at the councils of Geneva without touching some hidden nerve and setting it in a condition of quivering protest. The League has, however, been long enough in existence to reveal its strength and its weaknesses, its power, its potentialities and its perils.

It has already achieved triumphs of which its founders may well be proud. The restoration of Austria to life when it seemed to have been hopelessly submerged in the deluge of economic, financial and political disaster which had overwhelmed it, is a notable feat of artificial respiration. The successful effort organised by the League to stamp out typhus in Eastern Europe and prevent its spread to the West is also a success worthy of record. But for this intelligently conducted campaign that terrible disease would have ravaged Russia and Central Europe and laid low millions out of populations so enfeebled by hunger and privation as to become easy victims to its devastating assaults.

The Labour branch of the League has also been specially active and energetic, and its persistent endeavours to raise and co-ordinate the standards of toil in all countries are producing marked and important results. In addition great credit is due to the League for the splendid work it has accomplished in alleviating the distress which prevailed amongst the famine-stricken areas of Eastern Europe and amongst the refugees who fled from the horrors of victorious Bolshevism in Russia, and the still greater horrors of Turkish savagery in Asia Minor.

But these humanitarian tasks, praiseworthy though they be, were not the primary objects of the foundation of the League. Its main purpose was the averting of future wars by the setting up of some tribunal to which nations would be bound by their own covenant and the pressure of other nations to resort in order to settle their differences. Its failure or success as an experiment will be judged by this test alone. How does it stand in this respect?

It succeeded in effecting a settlement of a dangerous dispute between Sweden and Finland over the possession of the Aaland Islands. That success was on the line of its main purpose. Here the methods of the League gave confidence in its complete impartiality.

So much can, unfortunately, not be said of another question where it was called in and gave its decision. Its Silesian award has been acted upon but hardly accepted by both parties as a fair settlement. That is due to the manner adopted in reaching judgment. Instead of following the Aaland precedent in the choice of a tribunal, it pursued a course which engendered suspicion of its motives. It created a regrettable impression of anxiety to retain a certain measure of control over the decision. There was a suspicion of intrigue in the choice of the tribunal and the conduct of the proceedings. In the Aaland case no great power was particularly interested in influencing the conclusions arrived at either way. But here two powers of great authority in the League—France and Poland—were passionately engaged in securing a result adverse to Germany. The other party to the dispute had no friends, and was moreover not a member of the League.

Britain stood for fair play, but she was not a protagonist of the claims of Germany. Poland had a powerful advocate on the League—a country with a vital interest in securing a pro-Polish decision. In these circumstances the League ought to have exercised the most scrupulous care to avoid any shadow of doubt as to its freedom from all bias. Had it chosen distinguished jurists outside its own body to undertake at least a preliminary investigation as it did in the Aaland case, all would have been well. It preferred, however, to retain the matter in its own hands. Hence the doubts and misgivings with which the judgment of the League has been received not only by the whole of Germany, but by many outside Germany.

This decision, and the way Poland has flouted the League over Vilna served to confirm the idea which prevails in Russia and Germany that France and Poland dominate the League. The Silesian award may be just, but the fact remains that it will take a long series of decisions beyond cavil to restore or rather to establish German and Russian confidence in the League.