The League of Nations in Being
DERHAPS the most dramatic moment of the recent Disarmament Conference was when M. Paul- Boneour, the first orator in Europe, sprang to his feet to plead security for France. It focussed in my mind for ever the appearance of the famous Hall of Glass during a debate.
With his boyish, eager face, surmounted by a shock of tousled grey hair, M. Boncour is a striking figure. When he stands up an unusual silence falls over the Hall of Glass, for the journalists stop whispering among them- selves and sit up and take notice. Every trick of rhetoric is his, every inflexion known to the voice of man. Silence, torrents of eloquence, raps on the order paper, great rhythmic gestures that anticipate his sentences, instead of following them, as do the actions of Northern speakers—there is no artifice he does not use on this .hard-headed and eminently practical audience of poli- ticians, administrators, newspaper men. It is not a gathering to be swept :away by winged phrases, yet it enjoys M. Boncour. His performance is so perfect that one almost forgets the sense in the joy of the sound.
.Sometimes he seems to be almost writhing out of his ,elothes in his sinuous posturings ; at other moments he is crouching, silent, quivering for a spring on. his argument. The sacrifice of France, her fears, her glory, -ring in his silver spice.. Her million dead are summoned to my imagination as I listen. Always it moves me to hear a Frenchman. speak of the War.
" Je vows supplie," the speaker is saying, "Messieurs • •jes representants de l'Union des Republiques Sovjetiques lSocialistes " (with what grace the tangled title comes from his.-eloquent lips, clenched hands before him, eyes echoing . his words !) " –_-je vows supptie- ! ." • He is asking Messieurs Litvinoff and Lunacharski not to hurry the date of the Text Disarmament Conference. The two Sovjet .tsars exit side by side. They listen. in some surprise, and obviously not unmoved by this appeal. Does the thought flash through their minds, as it does through mine, and no doubt many others under the spell of this speech, that discussion is almost always better than destruction ? How many of us in the Hall of Glass— some twenty dozen rather specially trusted people in various walks of life—really believe in the League ? The answer is, almost all. The few who do not are " cranks." Five years ago it was just the contrary. But public opinion has veered vertiginously, and politicians and the Press have adapted themselves accordingly. Those who do not see which way the wind is blowing will not long survive.
It is a remarkable scene, this Parliament of Man, often described before, but always worth doing again, for the public memory is short. Imagine, then, a large con- servatory, or a small town hall, whose three sides arc composed of seven tall arched windows, at the sides, and three at the end, with a minimum of structural support between them. The three windows giving directly on the Lake Leman are hung with red plush curtains to screen the delegates from the street. The floor is parquet, covered with occasional strips of grey carpet, and scarred here and there with the cigarettes of a negligent audience. The ceiling is frescoed in a bright Italianatc design of _flowers and fruit.
The legislators sit round a horse-shoe table, liberally provided with decanters of water and glasses, occupying about a third of the end of the hall nearest Lake Leman. Behind this table, against the plush curtains, sit the chief officers of the Secretariat--7Sir Eric Drummond, M. Defour-Feronce (his chief lieutenant), and the other Under-Secretaries, notable among them being the huge .bulk of the Japanese, M. Sugimura, who is Director of the Political Section. Sir Eric Drummond, the Secretary- -General, and past-.master in the art of persuading com- mittees to stick to the point, sits next the President. Inside. the horse-shoe are the .shorthand writers, trans- lators, and interpreters. The task of the latter is extremely onerous and they discharge it with an ability amounting to genius. Directly M. Boncour is seated, for instance, Colonel Wade rises, note-book in hand, and reads out the Frenchman's twenty minutes of impassioned oratory, sentence by sentence, in correct and cogent English.
Similarly, when M. Litvinoff made his vehement address, M. Parodi was entirely a l'hauteur de ca tdche, and without pause or hesitation rendered the torrent of broken English into fluent French, subtracting nothing, adding nothing except a few graceful gestures of his own, which accom pany the periods of the Latin tongue.
The remaining two-thirds of the hall is composed of some twenty rows of desks, where the Press of the world forms the audience. The general public are not admitted to Council debates, owing to lack of accommodation, but there is room in the side aisles for a few observers. No one, however, is allowed into the Hall of Glass without a photographic pass, since some ragamuffin, years ago, slapped Count Bethlen's face after gaining admission by saying he was a journalist. On this occasion the presence of the Russians made precautions doubly necessary, of course.
The proceedings are less of a full-dress debate than I had supposed. During the translation of the speeches, for instance, the audience feels free to move about amidst a sussuration of small-talk, and smoke and flutter sheets of paper which messengers bear away to the tele- graph office. If there be a paradise on earth for jour- nalists it is this, it is this, it is this ! The statesmen of the world declaim for their benefit, but they need not listen, for the speech will be translated. And again they need not listen, for only a quarter of an hour after the delivery of a speech the buzzing bureaus of the Secretariat will have produced lithographed verbatim copies of it for distribution. All that the happy reporter need do is to strike out the paragraphs which his newspaper does not want, add a few fine careless raptures of his own, and hand the whole to a page. If, however, he would prepare a more personal message for the breakfast-table of his country he has a comfortable press-room in which to do it and a helpful staff to assist him. All this is very right and very up-to-date ; for without the Press where is public opinion ? How should we know that our repre- sentatives had ever opened their mouths ?
This, then, is the setting in the Hall of Glass. The dying Goethe or the living Dr. Saleeby would be satisfied with the light of heaven that guides our labours. From where I sit I can see glimpses of the Lake through the pollard willows that stand against the grey of sky and water like so many thousand-branched candlesticks. Close at hand, under the windows, are formal lawns and gravel paths ; beyond, in the background, the cloudy Alps.
Inside, in a not unpleasant atmosphere of smoke and steam-heating, we men and women from half the races of the earth meet all on the level of the parquet, inti- mately and informally, little groups of people of good will in whose minds is reflected, it is not fantastic to hope, something of the serenity on the face of the waters of Lake Leman.
What a concourse of nationalities it is ! M. Beres spoke before M. Boncour, also Lord Cushendun and Count Bernstorff and M. Litvinoff. During a ten- minute interval in the proceedings the 'delegates stand about chatting with each other and the audience. One of the beautiful journalists of the Conference, a Dutch girl, goes forward to mingle amongst the elect of nations, her fair head carrying as it. were the standard of youth and the emancipated womanhood of the Northern - peoples -amongst the black. coats and bald ..pates of legislators, who are not without susceptible- hearts as well as possessing some of the acutest brains of Europe: - How soon, with all this meeting and mingling, will-war between members of the League become intolerable and unthinkable ? Statesmen come and go. Even journalists disappear, no one quite knows where. But the League goes on. If it were to perish in another world-war, a new League would arise on this very spot from the ashes of destruction. Every sensible man and woman on earth knows that modern war is too horrible, too ruinous to continue it will end simply because the common sense of mankind declares that this thing shall not be.
Is there not something novel enough to give us pause -in this apparent platitude ? The miracle of peace- may be wrought by the lordship of a united will. Sane people cannot meet four times a year in Geneva and then go away to make preparations for blowing each other to bits.
What actual decisions will be taken in the Hall of Glass I do not know, nor does anyone else. But that they will lead to peace I am certain. The words that have echoed between its windows have been heard before oil earth, but never has the spirit that informed them been so universally acknowledged by mankind.
To organize and express this new will of the world the Secretariat of the League exists. Next week I hope to describe, quite simply, how it works.
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