Billions in the Balance

Billions in the Balance

The fifty-fourth session of the Council of the League of Nations opened in Geneva, last week, with sardonic Vittorio Scialoja in the chair. This brilliant, skeptical Italian jurist comes of a line of Scialojas who have been magistrates and grand dignitaries since the 17th Century. He collaborated with Woodrow Wilson in drafting the Covenant of the League of Nations as Italian Foreign Minister (1919-20) ; today, in the 73rd year of his vigorous age, he is the personal and implicitly trusted diplomatic representative of Dictator Benito Mussolini. "Order!" rapped Chairman Vittorio Scialoja, as his judicial forbears have rapped for generations, and around the big U-shaped council table there came to order some 14 statesmen, including Europe's famed "Big Three": Sir Austen Chamberlain (Britain); M. Aristide Briand (France); Dr. Gustav Stresemann (Germany). Almost at once it appeared that the chief thing all these assembled Excellencies wished to accomplish was the avoidance of controversial subjects. They positively dared not risk having debates of any heat for fear of warming up international animosities likely to disrupt the work of the Second Dawes Committee at Paris (see above) which is trying to revise the Dawes Plan. As a result of this ticklish situation-- with billions in the balance--the achievements of the League statesmen at Geneva last week were only these: 1) They debated ad infinitum and post-poned to next June for further debate the so-called "minorities question." 2) They applauded announcements by Germany's fat Dr. Stresemann and Poland's lean August Zaleski that these nations are now "ready" to ratify the international protocol prohibiting employment of poison gas and bacteria as war weapons.

3) They accepted the resignation of onetime New York City Police Commissioner Col. Arthur Woods from the League's Anti-Opium Committee, and appointed in his place Chief of Police Jonkheer A. H. Sirks of Rotterdam.

4) They ordered transmitted to all League member states the text of a Finnish proposal to establish a credit of $40,000,000, any portion of which might in case of war be extended under League auspices to any state adjudged "the victim of aggression." Thus instead of possessing an army of soldiers to enforce peace, the League would have "an army of dollars." Finns hope that this ambitious proposal will be adopted when the League Assembly meets next September.

5) They adjourned after announcing that the June meeting of the Council will be held for the first time in Madrid.

Even during so stodgy a session Great Britain's lank, slightly supercilious Nobel Peace Prize winner Sir Austen Chamberlain was unable to avoid committing another of his characteristic "bloomers." He received the British press at his hotel, expressed for once his secret dislike for the Kellogg Pact Renouncing War, and then demanded that his comments be kept secret. From four different British correspondents it was confirmed that Sir Austen said, in substance: "It is my personal belief that the Kellogg Pact is merely an American gesture, which can be regarded as peculiarly suitable by Americans alone." When London Daily News Correspondent Wilson Harris asked, "Do you think the Pact will have a favorable influence on disarmament?" Sir Austen replied with an aggressive air, "Do you? They're building 15 cruisers, aren't they?"

Soon in far-away Washington, D.C., the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Borah, bitterly retorted: "Need Sir Austen be surprised that the United States builds cruisers when men in authority like himself jeer at peaceful methods of settling international controversies? . . . It has been pretty well known that he has always been against the treaty. He came very nearly torpedoing it in his diplomatic communications just as he came near to torpedoing Locarno by his secret Anglo-French naval conference (TIME, Aug. 13 et seq.). . . . Sir Austen's diplomatic communications in regard to the peace pact were calculated, if not designed, to weaken it."

Next morning, when a majority of British papers set about savagely flaying the Foreign Secretary, he suddenly hauled down his flag and issued this statement: "I wish to emphasize and categorically deny that I ever made any statement to the press here, or to anyone else, of the character which has apparently been attributed to me. If I ever belittled the Kellogg Pact, it would have been a contradiction of every public utterance I ever made."

Disgusted newsmen noticed that the weasel-words of the first sentence did not state what Sir Austen "categorically denies," while those of the second sentence strongly suggested that the Nobel Peace Prizeman has two opposite opinions of the Kellogg Pact, one private, the other for "public utterance."