The Creator of the League
BY H. WILSON HARRIS
ON the day this issue of first Secretary-General Jays down an office he has thing over thirteen years fourteen. The Spedator appears the of the League of Nations held technically for some- and actually for exactly If any man is entitled to be called the creator of the League it is Sir Erie Drummond. It is true that he has been the head only of the Secretariat, and that the Secretariat, as an international civil service, is the servant of the Council and Assembly, charged with executing policy, not initiating it. But the Secretary- General is a permanency, while Council and Assembly delegates come and go, and he is perpetually on the spot, while they visit Geneva only three or four times a year or less. The fortunes of the League therefore rest in the Secretary-General's hands to a degree for which the traditions of any national civil service provide no parallel. To Sir Eric Drummond unqualified tribute must be paid on both positive and negative grounds— on negative, in that he has steered the new craft safely through these critical initial years, avoiding with singular skill that swing of the rudder a touch too far to left or right that would have spelled inevitable disaster ; on positive, in that he succeeded in building up, by a wise selection of men and an accurate prevision of the needs of the immediate future, a machine that has worked with remarkable smoothness through many vicissitudes. It is to the handling of his staff as much as to the enlistment of it that Sir Eric has owed his success. He chose a man, laid responsibility on him, and then so far as possible left him alone. That deliberate system of riding with a loose rein never argued for a moment slackness on the rider's part. On the con- trary Sir Eric Drummond has always made it a rule of keeping contact with his staff at any point where his experience could be of value to them. Whenever he had an interview with a delegate or some other visitor of importance of any kind, he regularly made it his business to dictate immediately a précis of the conversation and circulate it confidentially to such of his staff as might have any concern with the question discussed—a piece of sound technique of obvious value.
That was in itself some tax on a busy man. But in fact one of Drummond's outstanding characteristics is his industry. "Other members of the Secretariat," one of his former colleagues said the other day, "may occasionally have worked harder than the S.G. for a short burst, but no one ever did the same amount of sustained work as he did." What is more it has been smooth, unagitated work. No one ever saw Drummond in the least degree rattled—though, rather unready speaker as he is, he could defend the Secretariat with spirit if ever it was attacked by irresponsible delegates in the Fourth Committee of the Assembly. Even in his more crowded moments he would find time somehow to study any document of importance put before him, and return it annotated to its writer within twenty-four hours. There was little that the different sections of the Secretariat were doing of which he was ever ignorant. All that is the essential part of the work of the head of a civil service, but it is a part of which the outer world, naturally, saw little. But in his contacts with delegates of all nations Drummond has been equally successful. Like the ancient priests who rightly gained a reputation for wisdom because they could drain the minds of pil- grims who came to them from every land, the Secretary- General of the League of Nations has a unique oppor- tunity—indeed the duty rather than opportunity—to keep in touch with Foreign Ministers and their staffs throughout the world. The experience thus garnered, added to his native shrewdness and discretion, made Drummond the first man most political visitors to Geneva were anxious to meet. He was a clearing-house in himself, and he had usually sound advice to give as well as sound information. But perhaps Drummond's supreme achievement, having regard to what his unique situation demanded, was his complete detachment from any purely national standpoint No one ever looked on him—and it is a great thing to say—as the exponent of a British point of view at Geneva. He was there to defend the League point of view and nothing else, and he never did defend anything else. So completely, indeed, did he discharge what he rightly conceived to be his duty as a servant of the League and the League alone that perhaps he sometimes failed to appreciate fully how assiduously some of his subordinates were keeping one eye on their own capitals—to which they might ultimately want to look for preferment—and one on their immediate work at Geneva. In recent years that tendency has varied between a weakness and a scandal.
On the whole Sir Eric Drummond's pioneer work was his best. It was the work on which most depended and he did it astonishingly well. An impetuous man, bent on forcing the League prematurely to the forefront in world affairs, might have broken it before it was three years old. Through all those years a remarkable con- trast was provided between Drummond at the League Secretariat and Albert Thomas at the International Labour Office. Each was manifestly in his place. Thomas would almost certainly have driven the League too hard and smashed it. Drummond might or might not have made a success of the Labour Organization. Here, indeed, judgements regarding the Secretary-General may differ. It can be argued easily enough that his native caution was sometimes carried to excess. In his anxiety to spare the League some collision that might be disastrous to it he has seemed occasionally to prefer the line of least resistance. He had his critics at the time of the dispute about permanent seats on the Council in 1926, when he was in favour of conceding the claims of Spain, and much more recently there have been those who considered him too tolerant of Japan's lawlessness in a desire to get the dispute settled by consent and avoid the withdrawal of Japan from the League. These are always the hardest types of question to pronounce on. Broadly speaking the Secretary-General's foot slipped more easily to the brake than to the accelerator, but he is entitled to • claim that as a result the car is still running well. The other policy might have meant better speed, but it might equally well have meant disaster. Sir Eric Drummond will in the course of nature have many successors at Geneva. Comparatively few of them probably will be Englishmen. They will pursue varying methods and achieve varying degrees of success. But it is difficult to believe that it will be said of any of them that he served more loyally or more effectively than the first of the long line, and this country may reflect with some satisfaction on the debt the League of Nations owes, and freely acknowledges, to the political and administrative ability of an Englishman—or, to do honour where honour is due, a Scotsman.
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