Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1938, Side 209

NANSEN AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 199
minor officials belonging to the Departments concerned. I know
that sanguine people suggest that the change in the League func-
tions would only be for a time, until, that is, the dictatorship
countries could be induced to resume their League membership.
That seems to me most improbable. Read the Press of Germany
and Italy and the speeches of their leaders. Their objection is
not to this or that activity of the League but to the whole con-
ception of international control or even international advice.
They believe still that the future of their countries is to be found
on the battlefield and that any other conception of national
policy is not worthy of a virile people. To the Nansen school,
that opinion is the enemy of all progress and all tranquility. They
recognise that the nations, and particularly the smaller nations,
can only flourish in an atmosphere of peace. Whatever may have
been true in past ages, Europe is now one whole. Peace, it has
been well said, is indivisible. Even on the other side of the At-
lantic, the opinion is growing that America’s chief interest is peace
— not only for herself but for the whole civilised world. That
is infinitely more true of Europe. Those who have persuaded
themselves that their country can remain unscathed when the
whole Continent is in flames, are living in a dangerous delusion.
That is why Nansen devoted the closing years of his life to Ge-
neva and all it stands for.
Nor is it yet too late to restore the League. All that is necessary
is courage and determination — unhappily the rarest of all poli-
tical qualities. Still, they exist. The line of brave statesmen did
not perish in May, 1930.
It may be that some modifications in the Covenant are needed
not involving changes in its terms so much as a clearer understand-
ing of what those terms mean. We must recognise that the whole
purpose of the Covenant is to encourage settlement by agreement
or, failing that, by arbitration, and that it is only when all hope
of pacific settlement has vanished and that a resort to war has
actually occurred or is definitely threatened that the coercive
machinery of the Covenant comes into play. That should be made
unmistakably plain. It is possible that the Article which provides
for changes in international conditions which have become
dangerous to peace might be elaborated. Certainly it should be
made clear that coercion is not in itself an object of the League.
On the contrary, it is at best a regrettable necessity and should
only be resorted to when there is no other means of securing peace.