New Figures

The stubborn, powerful intrusion of an extraneous issue into piddling proceedings of the Ninth Assembly of the League of Nations, last week, spurred flagging interest and set in the spotlight of world fame a new figure: Hermann Mueller, the socialist, the dry, spectacled, sohoolteacherish Chancellor of the German Republic (TIME, June 25 et seq.).

Herr Mueller came to Geneva last fortnight with the avowed purpose of forcing League statesmen out into the open with respect to Germany's long unheeded demands for speedy evacuation of the Rhineland by France and her Allies. Properly speaking, this matter is no concern of the League, but of the Conference of Ambassadors at Paris. However, the veteran, major League statesman, M. Aristide Briand, French Foreign Minister, is also President of the Conference of Ambassadors. Therefore Hermann Mueller was knocking at the door of Headquarters, last week in Geneva, when he strolled down the Lake to Aristide Briand's hotel (always the Bergues), and engaged him in a series of clandestine conversations which completely overshadowed the Ninth Assembly.

Eventually the German wrung from the Frenchman a promise to convene a "Rhineland Conference" of the interested powers at Geneva, within a few days. Cautious M. Briand warned that the "conference" must not be considered more than a "petite reunion"; but no phraseology could conceal that it would mark the first real coming-to-grips between Germany and the Allies upon one of the most vital post-War issues.

Interest mounted still higher, when Chancellor Mueller intimated in the strongest terms that he does not propose to barter important financial considerations for immediate evacuation of the Rhineland; but rather to demand, under a slightly ambiguous clause of the Versailles Treaty, that occupation shall either cease without compensation as a matter of moral right, or give way to a temporary policing of the Rhineland by a Commission made up of representatives of the Neutral Nations.

While keeping the iron of this project hot and ready to strike, pedantic Hermann Mueller found time to favor the Assembly with an address in which he took the familiar German line that the Fatherland is the one really disarmed state in Europe and that "the League of Nations may count itself a failure, if it does not bring other nations to disarm."

Leagophiles Salon. The Villa Bartheloni in Geneva, once sacred to Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, is occupied this September by a tall, gracious woman who presided last week over a sort of international salon of Leagophiles, particularly U. S. Leagophiles.

The lady of the salon is Mrs. Florence Guertin Tuttle, widow of a Manhattan & Brooklyn coal tycoon, and chairman of the Greater New York division of the League of Nations Non-Partisan Association. She it is who blandishes and argues into Leagophilia as many potent Manhattan males as possible and whole flocks of females--particularly Junior Leaguers, who may later influence potent husbands.

Mrs. Tuttle possesses the accomplishment of wearing a high comb (occasionally diamond studded) with the authentic air of a peeress supporting a tiara. Such gracious poise, when supported by copious and persuasive League small talk, has converted many a Manhattan parson, brought round numerous editors and educators, and secured-hearty cooperation from dozens of distinguished persons who were not previously "League conscious."

Last week Mrs. Tuttle made a specialty of enlightening and entertaining U. S. tourists who happened to be near Geneva when the Assembly opened and dropped over to peer into what it was all about.

Suave Dane. Elected president of the Assembly was that suave and charming crony of King Christian X of Denmark, His Excellency Herluf Zahle, Minister for Denmark at Berlin. Minister Zahle was Denmark's first delegate to the League in 1920, and resumed that post in the years 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925, 1926, 1927, 1928.

Deliberations by the Assembly were principally confined to stereotyped laudations of the Kellogg Treaty by all hands, while everyone was preoccupied with the Mueller-Briand parley over Rhineland Evacuation. Outstanding was the news that Spain, who, as everyone knows, has not always been too amicable to the League, had been elected to fill one of three nonpermanent vacancies in the council. Venezuela and Persia were elected simultaneously after the assembly refused to re-elect China.