SICK MAN

A few persons still remember those cloudy days before the World War, when in common parlance it was customary to refer to the late and unlamented Turkish Empire as the "sick man of Europe." Today Europe reports that she has another sick man. His death will be much more in the nature of tragedy for a watching world than was the unheralded demise of the Turkish Empire. This wasted invalid, the League of Nations, at whose bedside the faithful Marianno stands with a melancholy smile and a hypodermic needle, is that child born so auspiciously in 1919 with racking labor pains to Woodrow Wilson, Clemenceau, and Lloyd George, that same child whose bronchial wheezings on the shore of Lake Geneva for the past sixteen years have so worried a hopeful world.

France's determinations to keep the League of Nations alive at the cost of considerable insecurity to herself shows Gallic tenacity in its highest degree. Her forthcoming treaty with Russia would no doubt be a far more effective weapon in keeping Germany on the floor if Comrade Litvinov were allowed to have his way. The Russian Foreign Minister, realistic as ever, prefers an alliance providing for instant mobilization of both French and Soviet armies in the event of provocative action on the part of Germany. The French government, however, faithful as ever to its patient at Geneva, has insisted mulishly that in the pact the spirit of the Covenant of the League of Nations be kept intact, and seems to have won its point.

The action of France in clinging to this last sepulchre of international action is most significant today when in Europe disillusion stalks armed with bayonets, and faith in anything except one's strong right arm marks a nation as a whimsical idealist. France's fortitude, if carried to its ultimate conclusion, will be a far greater factor in maintaining peace than appears on the surface. The old system of turning the entire country over to the military staff at the first sign of storm clouds was an enormous factor in preventing the localization of the conflict in 1914. When two mobilized armies glare at each other across an open frontier, diplomats might better go golfing than try to arbitrate.

Whatever loss of efficiency France and Russia may suffer in timed of crisis by appealing to the League, it is worth the risk. Under the forthcoming treaty, the League is given the opportunity of trying to avert the war. If it fails, the military staffs are immediately free to plunge at each other's throat. Once again solicitous France has injected adrenalin into the bloodstream of the League with apparent success.