The League of Nations A Twelfth Assembly Balance Sheet
No man's epitaph ought to be written till he is well dead, and the Twelfth Assembly of the League of Nations is still in articulo mortis as this brief estimate of its career is being framed. The Assembly at any rate is ending better than it began, if with the work of the Assembly may be identified the work of the Council, which in the past week has been dealing as best it could with the most serious political dispute that has for long been before it.
Every element that could make a dispute between two nations difficult to handle has been present in the case of the Manchurian affair—distance, lack of means of verifying conflicting reports, the special rights of the Japanese in Manchuria, the manifest powerlessness of the Government at Nanking to give effective guarantees regarding the conduct of the Chinese troops and the Chinese population under the suzerainty of Chang Hsueh-liang at Mukden. Add to that the weakness of the personnel of the Council, from which four Foreign Ministers were absent during the discussion of the Manchurian affair—M. Briand and Dr. Curtius having left Geneva earlier than they need on the ground of the Berlin visit, and M. Zaleski and M. Marinkovitch for no apparent reason at all—and the misgivings upon the appearance of the dispute on the Council's agenda will be understood. A single glance round the table made it obvious that the weight of responsibility would rest mainly on Lord Cecil, for the Spanish Foreign Minister, Selior Lerroux, though he happens to be presiding because it is his country's turn, is completely new to the League, and Signor Grandi, with a rather longer experi- ence, is no master of its technique. Lord Cecil, of course, has the disadvantage of not being a Cabinet Minister, but he has the far more than countervailing advantage, so far as Geneva is concerned, of being Lord Cecil, and the Government at home has obviously been placing the completest confidence in him.
And against all these handicaps must be set the enormous gain of the close collaboration established in this matter with the United States. When the record of this Assembly is weighed and measured with deliberation after a lapse of weeks the most marked feature of it may well be felt to be the new relationship created between Washington and Geneva. That was personified in Mr. Hugh Wilson, the United States Minister at Berne, a representative in whom his country is singularly fortunate. Mr. Wilson has been in daily evidence at Geneva in the later stages of the Assembly. The United States was invited to join the Third Commission of the Assembly when it was discussing the question of an armaments truce. It accepted, and Mr. Wilson sat with the Commission, spoke in public at its meetings, and became a member of its drafting sub-committee which hammered out the formula finally adopted. At the first meeting of the Council which considered the Manchurian affair Lord Cecil proposed that the records of the Council discussion should be communicated to the United States Government. That was done the same night, thanks to heroic work in the American Consulate at Geneva, and the next day there arrived a letter of remarkable cordiality on behalf of the Washington Government, detailing Mr. Wilson to keep in the closest touch with the Council throughout the nego- tiations in progress. He did not actually sit with the Council itself, but he was in constant touch with its principal members and the Secretary-General, and in the Manchurian affair the League and the United States have been marching side by side. If this is to be a precedent the outlook for world co-operation in the preservation of peace is enormously improved, thanks first and foremost to the straightforward common sense of the American Secretary of State.
As for the dispute itself we are not out of the wood yet, and it is a little early to draw conclusions. But there will be plenty to be drawn later on, and there is a good deal of controversy already about methods followed. At the Council table itself the Chinese delegate, Mr. Alfred Sze, his country's Minister in London, has secured a hundred per cent. of the sympathies of the audience by his skilful handling of his case, while his rival, M. Yoshizawa, has been at a considerable disadvantage by reason of his difficulties with both the French and the English lan-
guage, and also through the obvious conflict between a military party and a peace party in the Cabinet at Tokyo. It was clear that in these circumstances, and having regard to Japan's traditional concern about prestige, the Council must walk warily and avoid anything like a flourish of the big stick till every other method had failed. The first and essential task, as Lord Cecil pointed out, was to get the Japanese troops withdrawn to the bases whence they had started—to establish the status quo ante, as the Chinese demanded—and though some ardent commentators were manifestly disappointed that the • Council did not level an ultimatum at Japan with the threat of a blockade behind it, all the information at present available goes to. show that the Council's appeal to Japan to withdraw is in fact being complied with, and without any strain of the relations between Tokyo and Geneva. There is a good deal to settle yet, notably responsibility for the original outbreak and the question of reparations, and in all its aspects the affair will repay concentrated study;' for apart from the fact that the League has never before had to handle a case of armed conflict between contr.. tries of such importance as Japan and China, several fine points in the interpretation and application of the Covenant are involved.
If, said one experienced observer, the League could settle the Manchurian trouble and at the same time secure agreement to an armaments truce, the September meetings would bear comparison with any of their predecessors in the series. The League has beyond question done much to promote a Man- churian settlement, and it will, unless an eleventh-hour failure supervenes on a tenth-hour success, have accepted an arma- ments truce formula which, while not so definite or binding as might have been desired, may be considered on the whole as worth something. As Lord Cecil observed in the course of the discussions, the observance of the truce will have to be left in the last resort to the honour of the governments. If they are honourable in their intentions a broad statement of principle is good enough. If they are not, no formula is likely to be water- tight enough to bind them.
For the rest the Assembly has adopted a convention which will enable the Council in times of crisis to prescribe various measures calculated to preserve peace, such as the withdrawal of troops to a certain distance from frontiers ; it has tightened up its machinery for dealing with slavery ; it has dissipated finally any hopes that may have existed in any quarter of getting the Disarmament Conference postponed ; it has approved new activities such as the working out of a scheme of medium term credits in the financial field. But it cannot be pretended that it has been a great Assembly. It has failed in certain respects where, even if it could not have succeeded, it might at any rate have attempted success. In particular the collapse of the financial discussion initiated by the French Finance Minister, M. Flandin, and Sir Arthur Salter was a deplorable example of the spirit in which the greatest financial crisis in the world should not be faced.
No comparisons need be drawn between the general attitude of the British Labour Government and its successor towards the League. But the difference between the value to the League of a British Government with a policy and a British Government that had had no time to evolve a policy has been immense. In that respect at least better things may be looked for next year, no matter what the political colour of the Ministers on the Treasury Bench.
YOLTR GENEVA CORRESPONDENT.
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