Abstract
IN an article entitled “The Non-Political Value of the League” contributed to the Quarterly Review for January, Capt. A. L. Kennedy gives an admirable survey of the services rendered by the League of Nations technical organizations in non-political fields. He stresses the value of the resettlement of populations in Greece under the League Commission as a contribution to European peace and indicates the need for dealing with questions of refugees and minorities which still persists. In regard to opium, the co-operation established at Geneva has resulted in a central office which maintains supervision over a complete branch of economic activity, from the import of the raw material to the consumption of the manufactured article and in checking its transport from one country to another. This achievement has, however, set the League the even harder task of suppressing the illegitimate traffic which still flourishes to a serious extent and also the task of controlling the raw material. Again, the League has provided a central body for collating and directing measures against the traffic in women and children, and it has every claim to be regarded as the world's ministry of health, not only co-ordinating health work in different countries, as well as research and standardization but also, as in the Singapore Epi-demiological Intelligence Bureau, providing an intelligence service for the prevention of epidemics. Capt. Kennedy writes appreciatively of services rendered to China before the onslaught of Japan occurred as well as to the reconstruction work in Austria, the work of the Mandates Commission and of the International Labour Office and the Permanent Court of International Justice. This well-balanced assembly of facts leaves no room for doubt that if the failure to use the League in the political sphere led to its abandonment, we should require an exactly similar organization to carry on its present non-political activities if both nations and individuals are not to be deprived of services which have given and are giving them relief from want and suffering, higher moral and material standards and opportunities of a useful life.
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Social Services of the League of Nations. Nature 141, 637–638 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/141637d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/141637d0