League Still Needed.

Though the League of Nations has been humiliated, that is no reason for scrapping the League. A conciliator is often humiliated. But conciliation must still proceed. Viscount Grey's plea that after allowing for debits, the League system still represents a huge credit balance in internationalism may be allowed. The referee may yet regain control of the game; and it is not helpful to jeer when he blows his whistle unavailingly. But the League of Nations must tread shrewdly on the delicate ground. On 7th March Lord Robert Cecil (“the soul of the League”) said that Japan had taken the law into her own hands and had resorted to violence; and if the League Assembly did not exert its powers its members would be regarded as accomplices of the aggressor. On 9th March the British Foreign Secretary, Sir John Simon, stated at Geneva that Britain would not join in any coercive step against Japan.