A LETTER FROM GENEVA.

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]

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ia,—Four times a year at least, during the League of Nations ouncil and Assembly meetings, Geneva wakes up. As a

latter of fact, what with Disarmament Commissions, Coolidge onversations and Economic Conference and Transit Con- erence and Press Conference, it will be waking up most of the pring and summer. This last week's Council was the be- nning. On the whole it has been a good Council. Its embers have, on the face of it, taken things easily, for eetings have been held in the morning only, on the ground t, as Dr. Stresemann observed (he makes an excellent resident), you are fresher in the morning, though you are tter tempered in the afternoon.

In point of fact, there has been no idleness at all. The ftemoons, thus left vacant, have been employed to great rofit by private conversations designed to smooth out the ore awkward of the problems the Council has to solve, or by lks still less formal between Foreign Ministers (of whom there ere seven gathered round the Council table) on aspects of ternational relationships which may not directly affect the ague at all. Dr. Stresemann is usually in the thick of leh talks, for his country has still plenty of complications -)th west and east.

At Geneva the spirit of entente usually finds its outward pression over a jug of wine at Thoiry or some other wise. Is time, Poland and Germany having broken off their egotiations for a commercial understanding completely, ieir Foreign Ministers, in armchairs in a lakeside hotel, in up the broken links once more and then get themselves lotographed side by side. France and Germany being 11 at cross 'purposes over the Saar and the Rhineland and a riety of other little problems, off go their chief delegates to the neva motor show ; after Stresemann has done the honours the German cars, Briand leads the way round to the other le to show how Renault and Citroen and the rest of them do in France.

That is about 60 per cent. of the value of a League Council

d both Sir Austen Chamberlain and Dr. Stresemann have n insisting again, as they do in point of fact every time, on

e enormous value of these periodical meetings of Foreign nisters in a town where the two most distant hotels are not teen minutes' walk apart. But even the friendliest of talks tween the friendliest of Foreign Ministers cannot make all

e rough places smooth, and it would be idle to pretend that e Saar settlement, for example, has given satisfaction to rmany. It was a compromise such as is inevitable when me action has to be taken and two interested parties hold metrically opposite views as to what the action should be. But if the Saar discussion was in that sense unsatisfactory, Was from the dramatic point of view one of the greatest messes the League has registered. Down to the last day of Council private discussions had yielded no result at all. rmany insisted that France was entitled under the Treaty Versailles to keep no troops in the Saar whatever. France She would 'Withdraw them if a Railway Defence Force Organized to guard her communications through the Saar

oecupied area. Germany said that such a force would only be a French contingent under another name, that it was not required at all, and that it was in any case too large.

These sound small questions, but they rested on a principle, and what we had was the old eternal opposition of France and Germany translated into eloquence and skilful debating before the Press of the world in a Geneva committee room. Four Foreign Ministers, of Germany, of France, of Great Britain and of Belgium, played the leading parts. How many times over would they have filled the Albert Hall, if the little drama had been staged there instead of here ?

In the end they got agreement, but it was an agreement with nothing prearranged about it. On the contrary it was fought out point by point and step by step, fortunately in the :Atmos- phere of Locarno and Geneva, through four long hours and more. The final result was as good a testimony as has been displayed for some time to the possibilities of the League. Not, of course, that most, or much, of the time has been spent in fighting for agreement. Quite the reverse. The Council has this time been singularly harmonious and the firm presi- dency of Dr. Stresemann was pleasantly varied by lighter interludes. A very remarkable report has been presented by the committee which for three years has been investigating the extent and character of the white slave traffic. The next step is to concert more effective international action to combat the scourge thus revealed. New measures against that kindred scourge, the drug evil, have been envisaged in the course of a report thereon from the League's Opium Committee, and Persia, where the unrestricted growth of the poppy and an extensive smuggling traffic have caused grave difficulties, has made a welcome offer to reduce production by 10 per cent, a year for three years, pausing then to see what other producing countries are doing about it.

Among other questions the Council has dealt with is the progress of its very successful refugee settlement schemes in Greece and Bulgaria. Among others it has not dealt with arc Russia and China. No one proposed considering the Chinese situation and no one suggested how that question could be raised with advantage at 'Geneva at this juncture, though Sir Austen Chamberlain made it clear that, if it could, Great Britain would certainly make no objection. As for Russia the fulminations of the Pravda and the Isrestia leave Geneva undismayed. Most foreigners, it must be observed, found a good deal of difficulty in understanding what Great Britain had gained or hoped to gain by its recent Note to Moscow, but that on the whole is neither here nor there.

The best result of the whole week perhaps is that a numbet of important statesmen, having spent a week in close juxta- position to one another, have gone away with an increased conviction of their own and one another's merits. Departing, they leave the field to the soldiers and sailors and other disarmament experts.—I am, Sir, &c.,

YOUR GENEVA CORRESPONDENT.