The League of Nations

Stabilizing Work by the Council

IT is not often that the League of Nations fails to get through its agenda in a week, but at the recent meeting there were just too many items, or too important items, to make that Possible, and delegates were kept at Geneva till the second Monday.

A CROP OF DISPUTES.

When things are going well nobody minds an extra day, and everything did in point of fact go well this time. There was more than the average crop of disputes to deal with, for the Hungarian-Rumanian affair came up once more, and in addition there was a further instalment of the controversy about whether Greece could be compelled to accept delivery of the cruiser ' Salamis,' ordered from the Vulcan yard at Stettin and only. completed after the. War ; an interesting, but not vitally important, difference between Germany and Poland over the objection taken by the latter State to admitting non-German-speaking children to the German Minority schools in Upper Silesia ; a persistent conflict of views between Danzig and Poland over the rights of the Free City to police and inspect the Westerplatte, the piece of ground at the entrance to Danzig harbour where the Poles have the right to land munitions and start them on their journey into Poland ; and finally, of course, the old and difficult conflict between Poland and Lithuania.

WEARY OF DANZIG PROBLEM.

- Fortunately the Council was disembarrassed of these responsibilities one by one. Last March the Council fixed up a satisfactory modus vivendi over the Upper Silesian schools, but this time the Germans wanted a final ruling on the funda- mental legal points, so they announced their decision to exercise their rights under the Upper Silesia convention and refer the question to the Permanent Court. The Greeks agreed to take the ' Salamis' affair back to the Mixed Arbitral Tribunal, which had handled it once already, with the under- standing that this too, if need be, could go finally to the Court. Poles and Danzigers, observing that the Council was extremely tired of Danzig controversies, a fact which its members as a whole took no trouble to conceal, announced that they would hammer out the Westerplatte problem in situ if the Council would lend them an expert or so to help things through. There was thus left only the Polish-Lithuanian trouble—to which I will return in a moment.

THE' RUMANIA-HUNGARY DISPUTE.

Meanwhile, a word first on one or two of the Council's other tasks. The postponement of the question between Rumania and Hungary about the optants was not this time the result of failure to agree after protracted efforts. There were no efforts. M. Titulesco, the Rumanian Foreign Minister, disabled by Cabinet worries and influenza, failed after many false alarms to materialize at Geneva. But in any case direct negotiations were in course of being opened, at the instance of the Hungarians, and as long as there was any chance of their turning out successful the Council was naturally enough disposed to let them take their course, since no settlement imposed could compare in value with a settlement voluntarily concluded. The Hungarians, having engaged the Council's sympathetic interest in their endeavours, agreed readily enough to let the whole affair stand over till March.

LOAN SCHEMES.

In the field of reconstruction, where so many of its past victories have been won, the Council got its new Greek loan scheme through—objections, about which the less said the better, by the French being withdrawn at the eleventh hour —and passed on to its Financial Committee another loan request from a new client, Portugal. This particular appli- cation has various elements of interest and some of embarrassment, the latter, because the League is bound to hesitate a little before taking steps that would have the effect of bolstering up a revolutionary government which it may be undesirable to bolster up at all. Finance no doubt is finance, but finance and 11,110-les cannot be divorced completely.

In another aspect the loan proposal is worth noting because if it goes through it will make considerably more remote the prospect of the sale of Portugal's colonies. It may be observed that this is the first time the League has been appealed to for help in the ordinary process of the stabilization of a country's finances apart from any question of post-War reconstruction. •

The7projected Bulgarian loan met with certain difficulties on the Bulgarian side, the Government declining to accede to the Financial Committee's stipulation that the State Bank should be turned into a private institution to keep it free from political influences. That, therefore, is left over for further reflection and discussion. Hungary, with her League. reconstruction scheme working, as the French would say, a merveille, had no difficulty in securing the diversion of part of the unspent portion of her loan to constructive purposes not contemplated under the original project.

THE NEW ECONOMIC COMMITTEE.

Still more or less in the same field, there was the appoint- ment of the new Economic Consultative Committee of some fifty members, including probably Russians and certainly Americans, a body so large and so carefully chosen that it may almost be said that a select Economic Conference will be meeting every year. In other spheres there was the decision to publish the long-expected second part of the report on the Traffic in Women and Children, together with the observations of various Governments thereon. The authorities in the different countries evidently found little to cavil at in the report as originally drafted, though the French endeavoured to counteract the effect of certain strictures on the state of Paris by a vague and sweeping condemnation of the whole investigation, and the Italians toiled long and unsuccessfully to prove that conditions which in any other country would be called State Regnlation of Vice are not that when it is a case of Italy.

But, of course, the important question was Vilna—not Vilna really, for that notorious township never got much fur-, ther forward than the background, but the relations between Poland and Lithuania arising out of the seizure of Vilna by Zeligowsky in 1920. The event brought two live dictators to Geneva. M. Voldemaras, the Lithuanian Prime Minigter, had been before the Council before, but Marshal Pilgudski, of whom it was continually explained that he rarely travels and that he had never been out of uniform before, succeeded in stirring the spirits of the curious much as a visit from his fellniir- dictator at Rome might do. His presence was not indispen- sable, for the Polish Foreign Minister, M. Zaleski; is entirely competent, but the visit probably benefited the visitor, and his conduct of the negotiations no doubt gave the agreement reached a certain added authority.

POLAND AND LITHUANIA.

The result achieved by the Council at its nocturnal meeting last Saturday—no more in reality than the abolition of the, state of war maintained by Lithuania since 1920—may seem at first glance a little meagre. But it was all that could be expected,. and more than most people hoped, for it represents a unilateral concession by M. Voldemaras, who had, as it .was, to go home and explain as best he could _why he had given. something away and brought back nothing in return. To have asked more of him than that would have been to ask the . unreasonable. But the "state of war" was the barrier to every- thing. ,Now that that has gone a gradual approach to normal relations will inevitably follow, for Lithuania, having taken the first step in that direction, would have nothing in the way of prestige to gain and everything in the way of. finance and commerce to lose in declining the ordinary relationships of peace. Fcirtunately the pressure was sufficient to. make it plain to the Lithuanian Premier's supporters and critics alike that he had no option but to bow to the inevitable. You cannot push long with success against a Briand-Chamberlain- Stresemann-Scialoja-Adatei-LOinoff combination.

YOUR GENEVA CORRESPONDENT. .