OLD LEAGUE, OLD FAULTS
Villard, Oswald Garrison
Old League, Old Faults By Oswald Garrison Villard THE United Nations' Council on the future world organization has labored and announced its plan for the new league, and behold! The mountain has...
...Then Mr...
...That is a slim hope...
...Whatever league is set up in the proposed form will be created to carry out this policy, with the hearty support of Churchill and Stalin—as long as they do not quarrel...
...But it was emphatically to be a world dominated and ruled by the three great nations possessing the greatest navies and armies on the globe...
...That they wiH quarrel is as inevitable as the coming of the sun...
...Is there the slightest assurance anywhere that these men will rule with sole regard to the general welfare...
...Hence, we are to have military bases all over the Seven Seas, universal military conscription at home, and all the appurtenances of a great imperialist power...
...Roosevelt has changed his mind as to this...
...It was a thing of infamy, a pestilence, to be checked like typhus...
...Churchill will survive the ending of the war in office any longer than did Lloyd George...
...With them will sit, of course, representatives of the United States, England, and China, and, it is announced, France as soon as it is reconstituted, and "some other countries...
...They are simply reproducing it, and the question is why they do not revive the old organization since they insist upon keeping not only its form but its faults...
...The outline published authoritatively in the press calls for the identical organization of the dead association of nations...
...It is the same old thing...
...Hoover, President Wilson, and the three other members of the Big Four, Lloyd George, Clemen-ceau, and Orlando, with Mr...
...It will not be a council of all the nations represented on it...
...Now ifs upholders have conquered respectability...
...Can anybody really believe that Mr...
...Who will represent China, and whether that country will not break up soon are open questions...
...Admit it to the Council of the League...
...There is no evidence that Mr...
...The Only Difference The only difference is that instead of the early exclusion of Russia from the league, it is now to be one of the dominators...
...Roosevelt's opinions are usually in a state of flux and may be altered over night without notice...
...What History Teaches Then his idea—only last May—was that the world should be governed by the Big Four with a lot of excellent commissions, such as the UNRRA, and organizations like an international bank and the International Labor Office functioning in their respective fields...
...There is to be a council dominated by the victors in this war, an assembly comprising more participants than will be admitted to the council, and there is to be a world court with international jurisdiction...
...The mountain has produced a mouse...
...Roosevelt, for four years more...
...Have we not just seen Chiang Kai-shek as the head of China appealing to Mr...
...I grant that Mr...
...Molotov may hold on, and perhaps Mr...
...It is particularly interesting that this resurrection of the old league has been announced when President Roosevelt said in a series of articles, edited by him for the Saturday Evening Post over the signature of Forrest Davis, that he was opposed to any formal league with another permanent headquarters...
...And all history teaches us that no such alliance of military powers ever gave the slightest assurance of stability...
...Well, where is the slightest hope that this repetition of the old set-up will produce any other result than that which followed the establishment of the first League of Nations ? The Vital Fault Remains Does the guarantee lie in the character of the men who run it this time, as contrasted with the Big Four of 1919...
...For, as even the most outspoken advocates of a league of nations have admitted, the new league is nothing but the old...
...As for the assembly, it will represent a larger group with the conquered enemies excluded, precisely as was the case in 1919...
...That must make those smile ironically who remember the bitter rage against Russia at the making of the treaty of peace in Paris, as does the writer of these lines, who witnessed what took place there...
...Hoover's cooperation, were concerned primarily with throwing a cordon sanitaire around Russia to prevent the spread of that hideous menace to religion and civilization—bolshevism...
...Roosevelt to demand freedom for India, even now in the middle of this war—that is at least the belief in Washington...
...In practice it will be ruled by the representatives of England, the United States, and Russia, with polite consideratioa for the delegate from China...
...They take the place of Italy on the council...
...The diplomats in Washington have learned nothing from the fiasco of Geneva...
...But there is one thing that he is determined upon, and that is that we shall be one of the three rulers of the world...
...But if the present set-up should continue, the vital fault remains that the council will be dominated by the victors, and the representatives of the victors will be dominated by political considerations at home, or by their international power-political desires...
Vol. 8 • September 1944 • No. 38
