The League of Nations

How the Russians Fared at Geneva

TROUGH the week in which this article is being written and will be read is occupied at Geneva with the usual. December meeting of the League of Nations Council, a matter of greater interest., and it may be of greater importance, has been the

• four days' session of the Preparatory Commission on Disarm- ament, attended for the first time by representatives of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics.

The presence of M. Litvinoff and M. Lunacharsky might be described as a test contact, for never before had the Soviet Government sent diplomatic delegates to any League com- mittee or conference. Certain technical contacts there had been, particularly in the spheres of health and economies, but diplomatic representation was a new and, on the face of it, an encouraging development, except to those who believe that an impenetrable wall can be kept erected indefinitely between Russia and the world.

But satisfactory as the fact of the Soviet delegates' presence was, it might easily have done more harm than good. It would have been completely consonant with the policy of Moscow to send a Commissar or two to Geneva to do no more than make propaganda and enable the League of Nations to be displayed to readers of the official Moscow Press as an even more irretrievably Imperialist and capitalist institution than was supposed already. In that case the proper tactics would have been for the delegation to produce a fantastic proposal, fling it before the Commission, insist on its being either accepted or rejected, and then depart shaking off the tainted dust of Geneva dramatically during exit.

What, in fact, did happen ? The Commission duly opened on Wednesday morning. The delegates from its twenty-six different States filtered gradually into the Council room. Last • to arrive were a couple of quite normal black-coated gentle- men, with three or four normal secretaries and experts in their train. They found their seats and assumed them. The meeting opened. As newcomers to a Commission that had held three previous meetings already they claimed the right to state their views on the general subject of disarmament, and did so in a declaration which constituted a proposal for absolute and complete disarmament on a world-wide scale, to be carried through in a period of four years.

That perhaps went a little beyond the general expectation of what Moscow might be counted on to produce, but it is in fact very much of a piece with most of the output that eman- ates from that high-pressure propaganda plant. Its outstand- ing feature was a certain facile logic. You say the League is miming at the peaceful settlement of all disputes and the con- sequent elimination of war. Very well, we propose the -complete elimination of the means of war. You say the border States, Poland, Rumania and the rest, cannot disarm for fear of Russia. yery well, we offer to disarm completely, providing they and other nations will do the same.. There exists in America and to a less extent in England a fairly widespread Movement for the outlawry of war. What is the difference between that and a movement for the outlawry of armaments ?

Not all these arguments were advanced in the actual debate, but the greater part of the actual debate is postponed till the Commission meets again next March. But the point that matte-is- is that the o' delegates, having given their plan to the Commission and the world, 'were quitecontent to .see it sidetraCked and to fallow the discussion into other 'Channels. They showed not the smallest sign of ever desiring to make a scene. The deportment of M. Litvinoff and M.

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LacliaiSky was everything that could be Wished. In private they exclaimed quite frankly that if the League was not con- tent t.) go forward on their basis they would go forward on the League's basis. In any case their plan had nothing sacro- iiiiiiet about it. If disarmament in four years was too quixotic, 'then twit be disarmament in six or ten. And if other nations 'could make good their ease for retaining armaments of a 'Certain Standard- to meet special needs, then by all means let them make it good.

- A .good deal of the derision or indignation aroused by the

Soviet proposals might have been spared if it had been realized that the Soviet delegates, like those of other States, had a public at home to think of. To ask the Russian; tp Come to Geneva and be content with the kind of speed and the kind of methods that would satisfy Sir Austen Chamberlain or Lord Cushendun is to postulate a new revolution which, perhaps unfortunately, has not taken place: They came to Geneva to make a sort of demonstration. They duly made it and no one was a penny the worse. The Soviet delegates themselves, on the contrary, were undoubtedly the better for coming. They mixed with a lot of sensible people on friendly terms. They met many of the ablest members of the League Secretariat and learned a good deal about how the League itself is run. And they left Geneva with the firm resolve of coming back in February when the Security Committee, which has just been cohstituted, meets again.

All that is a good deal more important than anything the Disarmament Commission itself achieved, for the good reason that it was not called to achieve anything this time except the creation of the new cominittee on security and arbitration, and the formulation of plans for future work. On the course of that future work much will depend. Without the presence of non-members of the League of Nations, like the United States and Soviet Russia, nothing like full success would be possible. It will be hard enough as it is. But if Soviet dele- gates come to Geneva again and keep on coming a better con- tribution.will be made to the solution of the security problem than by the signature of a dozen written instruments.

So far, of course, nothing but a beginning has been made, and to convince two individual Russian delegates that col- laboration with the League is possible and desirable is a different matter from convincing the Council of Commissars and the controllers of the official Press. That was made evident enough by the outburst of nonsense in the Moscow papers about the victory of the Soviet delegation over its capitalist enemies at the very moment when that delegation was debating in a perfectly normal and orderly manner in a Geneva committee-room.

M. Litvinoff has, of course, not been the only newcomer to Geneva. We have had in addition Lord Cushendun, who has taken up the task Lord Cecil performed so well. His debut has been unsensational but successful. He is wisely surveying the situation and talking only when there seems something to be gained by talking—an attitude astonishingly original. With no pretence to his predecessor's optimism and enthu- siasms he is setting to work in a characteristically British way, mastering his brief with industry and standing generally for a policy of cutting the cackle and getting the job pushed through. Next time he will have to take a more prominent Tart, and will no doubt be quite prepared to take it.

To the German delegation a word of appreciation is due. Before the Commission met the air was red with rumours of Russo-German combinations at Geneva, and a certain identity of outlook between the two delegations does in fact exist. But German influence, so far as it was exerted at all on the Soviet delegates, was exercised to moderate them, and it was -the German delegate, Count Bernstorff, who at a moment when. the Commission was -speechless with embarrassment as to how to treat the Soviet plan, observed that the main thing was to fix the date for the next session of the Commission and that the Soviet proposals could be discussed on that occasion. The suggestion coming from such a quarter was accepted by M. Lunacharsky without a murmur.

As for the interview between Sir Austen Chamberlain and M. Litvinoff, arranged a little unexpectedly just before the latter's departure, there was obviously no possibility of its

leading to definite results. Much too wide a gulf has to be spanned for that. But these personal conversations rarely

fail to do more good than harm, and future negotiations when they come, as come they must, should be all the easier for what the official communiqué describes as "a frank exchange of views."

YOUR GENEVA CORRESPONDENT.