GENEVA IMPRESSIONS

Commonwealth and Foreign

[To the Editor of Tim SPECTATOR.]

SIR,—The habitues of Geneva seem agreed that the seven- teenth has, so far, been the most depressing of all Assemblies, and the newcomer can readily believe it. A visit to the still unfinished palace of the League on the Arians, which is now at last occupied by the Council and Committees but is still unready to provide accommodation for the Assembly, recalls to the mind a Punch drawing of the easy days of the War, wherein a small child, wrestling with a tangled piece of knitting, expressed the hope that the sock which she was making for the soldiers would be finished before the end of the War. Which will be finished first—the League's per- manent home, or the state of peace which it was created to maintain ? Some such thoughts are in all our minds, and there is therefore a sense of unreality about the present Agsembly, which its dilatory and intermittent sessions have, so far, done little to dispel.

Nothing could have been better calculated to induce a mood of disillusionment in anyone visiting the Assembly for the first time than the episode of the Abyssinian credentials, which monopolised the interest of the first three days. The final decision has, indeed, been widely hailed as a victory for the principles of the Covenant, and Di, in a sense, it was. There was an unmistakable expression of relief on the faces of most of the delegates at having escaped, for the duration of the present sessions, from a discreditable situation. But the long postponement of the decision, and the protracted discussions of the • Committee on credentials, left as the prevailing impression a sense of the difficulty with which the victory had been won, and of the cynicism of the manoeuvre which was defeated. What was really proved was the inadequacy of the fig-leaf with which it had been sought to clothe a policy of naked opportunism, but there remained a sense of disquiet that the machinery of the League should ever have been thought available for such a purpose.

Though, no doubt, diplomacy has often been driven to base its manoeuvres on grounds different from the true ones, it is impossible to pursue such a policy with credit when the realities of the situation are perfectly well known. The real motive for endeavouring to exclude the Ethiopian delegation was clear, and even, from the standpoint of pure expediency, cogent : to secure the return to international councils of an absent Great Power, by removing a delegation whose continued presence could not be of any real advantage even to itself. But, though everyone at Geneva knew of M. Avenol's visit to Rome, and the expressed determination of the Italians not to participate in the Assembly of which their victims remained members, and felt certain that, but for these considerations the credentials of Abyssinia would have been accepted without question, ostensibly the case was simply being judged on its merits in the normal course of League procedure, and these extraneous matters had nothing to do with it. The impartial spectator could only feel—what humbug !

The impressiveness of the decision was, moreover, hardly enhanced by the undignified gesture which followed, when a sufficient, though at the same time hardly flattering, number of votes elected a non-existent member of the abient Italian delegation as one of the vice-presidents of the Assembly. The incident as a whole, in fact, can give little real satis- faction to anyone. The Abyssinians are permitted, for the time being, to confront Italy like so many ghosts of Banquo : " Now they rise again,

With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, And push us from our stools."

but they cannot hope to derive any further benefits from membership of an . institution which has long since finally abandoned its duty to assist them. '

To those who are loyal believers in the Covenant, the difficulty with which principle has been enabled to triumph over expediency is moreobvious than the triumph itself, while those Great Powers which are still hesitating between a policy based on the League and a return to pre-War methods have been taught the incompatibility of the two and the impossibility of a compromise. Of course," the present critical stage of the League's existence tey have, every

excuse for halting between two opinions, since, though the ultimately disastrous consequences of the alternative system are everywhere realised, the effectiveness of the League as an Organ of international policy is now too doubtful to be

exclusively trusted : the choice is therefore one of real difficulty, but it will have to be made, since to pursue the one policy with the machinery designed for the other merely discredits both, and makes the worst of both worlds.

If the League is to continue to exert any real influence, now that faith in its coercive powers in restraint of aggression seems irretrievably shaken, it must at least be a forum before

which every, incident threatening the peace.of the world can

be fearlessly laid at the bar of public opinion, but, if the prevailing belief in Geneva is to be trusted, considerable pressure is being exercised to prevent discussion of such dangerous topics. Such a conspiracy of silence, and an attempt to deal elsewhere with every serious international danger, would go far to create the impression that the swing

back to 1914 had definitely taken place, and that the part which the League, would henceforth play in world .affairs would be insignificant.

So far, happily, it must be acknowledged that there has been little evidence to justify the current rumour. Those who had been led to expect that the speech of Mr. Eden would be

confined to harmless generalities were agreeably undeceived: It was remarkably frank in its analysis of the difficulties td

be surmounted, and specific in regard to the remedies Whieb' it proposed. It went far to blow away the mephitic atinosphert of 'the earlier proceedings, and to revive hope that British expressions of loyalty to the Covenant are something inore than lip-service. Nor did Seri& 'del Vayo, dilating 'upon th6 grievances of • the Spanish Governinent, 'appear seriously hampered in his task by any censorship froni behind the scenes r even if he did not name paiticular countries' developing his charge that non-inteivention was one-sided in- its operation, he was able to make his points with all the

frankness requisite. M. Delbos, too, though perhaps more vague in some respects, showed a refreshing faith and.cciurage in resuscitating, at the present juncture, the cluestibn of

disarmament : it thus does not appear to an onlooker that the Great Powers still remaining in the League have in any way abandoned the intention to work through it and to trust it.

But the time spent over preliminaries has entailed that, at the end of a week, the real work of the Assembly has hardly begun; and at the present stage it is impossible to predict whether the League will emerge stronger or weaker from the'

attempts which are to be made to reform it. It is, one fears, difficult to dispute the truth of the assertion made by the representative of Panama, who made use of a position of greater freedom than responsibility to include in a speech of unusual candour, the dogmatic declaration :

" It is impossible to carry out any collective undertaking, if a favourable psychological condition does not exist in the com- munity, capable of supplying the necessary inspiration with firmness and conviction. But this psychological condition does not exist in the bosom of the League of Nations, for faith is dead in every heart."

I have perhaps allowed Geneva Impressions to, be a •little over-coloured by the. inevitable 'Geneva depressions; mid 'it is -fair to remember that as I'. Write the "Assembly is yet young. '

Before it finds there may be a more hopeful tale to till.:77?