AMERICAN AT GENEVA CONVINCED OF VITALITY IN LEAGUE OF NATIONS

Mr. King was the official representative of two important Middle-Western nev. spapers at the League of Nations' Assembly last summer in Geneva and is now a student at Cambridge University, England. He has been in a position to observe the work of the Assembly and to interview many of the leading men connected with its activities.

"It is very unwise to declare the League dead." In these words Elihu Root cabled from Europe two years ago, when he was engaged with other leading jurists of the nations in drafting the constitution of the International Court of Justice. This message from the greatest living Republican to the Republican Chairman, during the palmy days of the Harding Front Porch Campaign of 1920, evidently had small effect. For Mr. Harding shortly afterward declared the league dead,--an easy form of attack upon an institution, well-known to journalists,--and fought the remainder of his campaign for the presidency on a definitely anti-League basis.

It did not take long for the causal visitor to Geneva, during the Third League Assembly, in September 1922, to reach the obvious conclusion that the League is very much alive. In common with many other Americans, with whom the press and visitors' galleries in the Assembly Hall were literally packed, I attended the sessions of the Council, Assembly, and Commissions day by day for over a month, and came away strongly convinced that the League, far from being in any sense dead, had definitely come to stay in the world, and had a spirit behind it, embodied by such leaders as Lord Robert Cecil and Dr. Nansen of Norway, that is not the kind of spirit that either men or adverse circumstances can kill. It was interesting to see the leaven working day by day on such Americans as had come to Geneva with unfriendly or skeptical feelings toward the League. After a few days, I heard several conservative Republicans say that they now felt that America should cooperate to the fullest extent with the League, though it would perhaps be better, for various cautious reasons, not actually to join it. Others went further, and, faced with the incontrovertible evidence that the League was a living and growing fact, felt that America should join the League without delay, and exercise the largest influence possible in strengthening its power for good, and shaping its course.

Lord Chelmsford Converted

One important member of the Assembly of 1922 was Lord Chelmsford, a hard headed British proconsul who had been Governor successively of Queensland and New South Wales, and for five years Victory of India. He came to Geneva reluctantly and as a skeptic, in the position of First Delegate of India to the Assembly. After a few weeks of participation in the work of the League, he admitted gracefully that he had been mistaken in his judgement, and delivered the following thoughtful tribute from the door of the Assembly:

"I accepted the invitation of the Government of India . . . because I was ready and willing to serve India in any capacity in which it might be thought I might be useful; but I am bound frankly confess that I came here a profound skeptic as to the value and utility of the League of Nations. A fortnight's acquaintance, however, with the working of the Assembly and the Commissions has made me hope my skepticism was unwarranted.

"I found, in the first place, an atmosphere of general goodwill and desire to cooperate which it would be almost impossible to conceive of unless one was living actually in the middle of it, and I believe it is almost equally difficult to convey to those who are outside the League what that atmosphere of good-will and cooperation is.

"I found, in the second place, the eminently practical handling of the subjects dealt with in the Assembly and in the Committees, a handling which gave the lie to the insinuations which are so often made outside, that the League of Nations lives and moves and has its being in an atmosphere of unpractical idealism.

"I found, in the third place--at least I hope I have found in the third place--a sincere determination on the part of the countries which are Members of the League to accept the resolutions of the League and to carry them out effectively and sincerely. These, it seems to me, are the three conditions precedent to success in the work of the League".

League Has Been Constructive

Many good people far from the seat of the League's activity,--an activity which, though worldwide, has its organic center at Geneva,--still talk loosely of the League of Nations as a vague idealistic dream. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as Lord Chelmsford, a practical administrator of long experience, has so aptly pointed out. The fact is that even in its short three years of history the League has undertaken and successfully completed a variety of international tasks of a practical constructive nature, such, in many cases, as have never before been accomplished in the world. To cite a few examples: it has set up for the first time in history a workable Court of International Justice; it has done the immense work, through its High Commissioner, Dr. Nansen, of repatriating 330,000 prisoners of war; it has actually prevented two wars, and brought a third to a close; and it has saved a nation, Austria, from the verge of bankruptcy and crumbling social run, by a carefully-planned international loan.

The League Secretariat, which is the Civil Service of the League, is one of the hardest-working business bodies in the world. Unlike the Council and the Assembly it is continuous, and transacts practical business every day of the year. It consists of 350 highly paid experts and their secretaries and clerks, chosen by examination, from every important nation in the world, except Germany and Russia.

Americans at Work in League

Of its American members, Professor Manley O. Hudson is an important member of the Legal Section, of which he was for a time the head, Mr. Arthur Sweetser holds a high post in the Publicity Section, and Mr. Hamilton Gilchrist is one of the three League Commissioners in charge of problems relating to the League government of the Free City of Dantzig and the Saar Valley. It is an interesting fact to Harvard men that both Messrs. Sweetser and Gilchrist are Harvard graduates, while Professor Hudson is a member of the Law School Faculty. It is a fact not generally known to Americans that the head of the all important Labor Research Section of the International Labor Office is an American expert, Dr. Royal Meeker. It should also be of interest to Americans that the League has installed an up to date American library, housed in steel bookcases, and run on the card-catalogue system. The League Librarian is Miss Wilson, an American lady.

The Council of the League attends to its business,--and vitally important business most of it is,--with remarkable despatch and precision. The representatives of the eleven member-nations which compose it include such impressive figures as Lord Balfour, ex-Premier Leon Bourgeois of France, Premier Branding of Sweden, and M. Paul Hymans, former Foreign Minister of Belgium. The Assembly, and the six Commissions into which it divided itself for the efficient conduct of its business, went through the enormous and varied list of topics on its 1922 agenda,--coming to a positive constructive decision in the great majority of cases,--with a smoothness that seemed little short of miraculous in a body composed of delegates from forty-four independent nations.

There is a certain amount of loose and inaccurate talking in America to the effect that the League of Nations,--far from being the dream that some others call it,--is a super-state,--a sont of international octopus busily engaged with its many writhing tentacles in sucking away the national independence of nations. Nothing could be farther from the fact, for the Council must agree unanimously on all important questions of policy, and thus a single national veto can prevent the League from pursuing a course of which that nation disapproves. The organs of the League constitute simply the political machinery by which the nations of the world may consult and act together in committee, when they so desire,--and nothing more.

The atmosphere of peaceful cooperation and agreement that pervaded the whole scene of League activity at Geneva was immensely impressive to an outside observer. Not a single personal discord between individual delegates marred the completely conciliatory spirit of the sessions of 1922. It was no less than thrilling to see Spaniard and Swede, Frenchman and Brazilian, Greek, and Chinaman conferring amiably and pleasantly together,--often over a cigar, or on a stroll along the Lake Front in the sunshine,--over world problems and concerns that were of common interest to them both. No one yet knows the immense number of international difficulties, small and great, that have been settled in this informal way at Geneva, between the League delegates of the nations most concerned. Much of the sordid selfishness and practically all of the secrecy of the old diplomacy that brought on the war has vanished from this open and friendly diplomacy at the seat of the League, Colonel Wade, an English interpreter to the Assembly, told me that the League was to him "a big friendly international club". As such, it is the one positive advantage that has come out of all the waste and wreckage of the war. He would be a misanthrope indeed, who wished it dead. And, as Mr. Root has said, if he thought it dead, he would be most unwise. For it has a spirit and determination behind it that nothing can kill, and, taking it all in all, it is one of the most buoyantly living things in the world today