General Smuts and the League
At a time when superficial commentators are dismissing the League of Nations as an experiment that has failed, and failed finally, the declarations made on that subject by the foremost of Dominion statesmen, General Smuts, merit much more than superficial attention. Many people who thought deeply, said the Prime Minister of South Africa, in defending a vote of £25,000 as South Africa's contribution to the League, were convinced that the only hope for the salvation of the world lay along the road of the League ; the League system was difficult to work in abnormal times, but in the first ten years of its life it did outstanding work in helping people over one obstacle after another. The events of the last half-dozen years have taught many lessons, but they have done nothing to shake confidence in the Covenant of the League as the soundest basis yet devised for an international society. What was wrong was that the members of the League refused the risks involved in carrying out the provisions of the Covenant, till in the end two of them, Britain and France, found them- selves forced to go to war on precise League of Nations prin- ciples, i.e., in defence of a victim of unprovoked aggression, in the worst possible conditions. It was considered too dangerous to risk a war with Italy in 1936, when she wantonly flouted the Covenant and invaded Abyssinia. A rather different valuation might be put on that risk today. It may be noted that Aus- tralia's continued support of the League was being announced at Canberra almost simultaneously with South Africa's at Cape Town.
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