A SPE C TATOR'S NOTEBOOK C URIOUSLY enough two of the leading figures
in the proceedings at Geneva this week—the President of the Assembly, M. Hambro, of Norway, and Dr. Rudolf Holsti, the Finnish delegate—are prominent Groupers. The Group Movement has in the last two or three years made a con- siderable impression in the Northern States ; a very experi- enced diplomatist, by no means a Grouper himself, told me, simply as a piece of objective fact, that the one effective check to the growth of Communism in Sweden was the work of the Groups. Alike in their relation to Dr. Buch- man, the Norwegian and Finnish delegates are very different in other respects. M. Hambro, with his keen, resolute face under a tousle of black hair, and the quick movements of his substantial form, is a personality incapable of being ignored in any circle. In Norway he is the proprietor of a leading Conservative paper and Speaker of the Storting, or Parliament (there is only one Chamber). He has a perfect command of English and no reluctance to employ it, with sardonic but good-humoured wit, in criticisms of England. M. Holsti, slim, fair, spectacled and soft of voice, is a con- trast to the Norwegian in almost all respects. But both are transparently honest men.
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