Economy at Geneva The British `Government has not handled its
proposal for an inquiry into League of Nations expenditure very happily, though' it has the satisfaction of having gained the support of Panama and Germany (and apparently no one else) for its proposition. Such a reception might have been anticipated and avoided. What Capt. Eden suggested was the appointment of a special committee which should deal with questions not only of staff and salaries, but also of the restriction of the scope of the League's work. The whole subject of expenditure concerns the Assembly, which approves the League's budget, rather than the Council, which has nothing to do with it at all, and to go still further and ask the Council to appoint a committee to advise on the curtailment of activities all of which the Assembly has at different times authorized, and indeed initiated, is clearly quite inadmissible. With the view that there should be as rigorous economy at Geneva as there has to be in every national administration there will be general agreement, and League officials could not, and no doubt would not, complain if they were asked to submit temporarily to salary cuts such as civil servants in almost every country have accepted. There is a strong Supervisory Committee (Lord Meston being among its members) which passes final judgement on the League's estimates before they are submitted to the Assembly each year, and the decision to ask this body, with the addition of two or three other experts, to study economy possibilities with special care meets the case well enough. That is something very different from the original British
proposal. * * * *
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