News of the death of M. William Martin, the late
Foreign Editor of the Journal de Geneve, reached me just too late for comment last week. It is an immense, almost an irreparable, loss. That, I agree, is putting it very high. But I can think of no one who made himself a. position equal to William Martin's. His daily leaders on international affairs converted his paper from a small provincial daily to an organ no European Foreign Office or Embassy could afford to miss. And since he left it it has dropped back into comparative insignificance. I have never agreed. with the complaint that Martin was unfair to Great Britain. He looked at international affairs with the detachment natural to his Swiss nationality, and from the standpoint of a profound believer in the League of Nations, and his censure was directed indiscriminately against any and every State falling short of its League obligations. He thought this country came very badly out of the Manchurian discussions of two years ago. But so, for that matter, did a great many Englishmen. Martin's knowledge was immense, but he generously attributed to the com- petence of his secretary his ability to pick the relevant facts out of the appropriate pigeon-hole at a moment's not ice. * - *
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