THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS: The Pencil Sharpeners

A lean faced Texan with a curious eye walked in and looked around It was his first visit. With a curious deference he was sharpening their pencils for the meeting of the Council of the League of Nations on September 4. Then he called on Sir Eric Drummond the Secretary General of The League and was courteously recieved.

Outside afterwards he was cornered by reporters and asked what he had learned. But the Texan, lean of face was lean of words on the topic. He talked a little though. He recalled the day several summers before when he had drawn the first draft of the Leauge of Nations Covenant at Magnolia under the direction of his good friend Woodrow Wilson. He said that eventually the U.S would have to become an “associate member” of the Leauge and adhere to the World court. He hoped that the League question would never more be dragged through the arena of U.S politics. He said that the Leauge would never be a real Leauge untill Germany, Russua and the U.S were members. Then he told a curious anecdote not generally known:

In 1919 he had taken an option on 1,000 acres of land on Lake Leman about six miles from Geneva. There it had beenhoped to build a palace worthy of the Leauge of Nations with a magnificent watergate in memory of all the soldiers who were killed in the war. When it became apparent that the U.S would not enter the Leauge, the option had been allowed to elapse and the project was forgotten.

“Are you coming back here again” he was asked.

” I am going to rejoin my wife at Evian-les-Bains. We shall be returning to the U.S shortly but I may return to Geneva for a few days about the time that the Council opens its meeting”

So saying Colonel House left the Secretarial of the Leauge of Nations behind him.

Meantime the pencilsharpeners continued there work preparing for the opening of the council’s meeting. Innumerable reports have been prepared. Some of them were given out in advance:

Slavery. The temporary slavery commission reported that slavery is practically wiped out except in the Mohammedan countries of the East. A peonage system of approaching it exiss in parts of Latin America. Abyssinia is the Christian country where it is still practiced, but progress has been made there towards its abolition. Slave raiding is rare except on the borders of the Sahara Desert. In Arabia many girls making pilgrimages from the East are seized and enslaved.

International Relief. A “preparatory committee “presented a draft ot a statute for an International Relief Union of which governments and national Red Cross organizations would be members. It woulc coordinate international relief activities so that prompt and efficient relief might be given in case of a national disaster in any country. It would also study means ot preventing floods, famines, etc.

Danzig Post Office. A committee to delimit the Port of Danzig decided that the port included not onlv the wharfs and waterside but also a good part of the business section of the city, cause of the ruling is that unde the Versailles Treaty Poland claims the right to postal service in the port of Danzig. Poland last year set up post boxes throughout Danzig German citizens knocked them down, mutilated them, spat upon them. The limits of the port are now tentatively defined.

While the pencil sharpeners were bustling about in preparation, no one seemed to give a thought M. Quinones de Leon. It was noted by the bustling clerks at the Secretariat that the Liberian minister at Paris had addressed a note to the League conveying his nation’s adherence to the recent Arms Control convention and strongly emphasizing that Liberia was a sovereign and independent republic. It was noted that Angora had designated Rushdi Bey, Turkish Foreign Minister to attend the Councils meeting and do battle for Turkeys side of the Mosul question. It was even noted that William Slocum ot Boston, resident in Geneva, had denied that he was on hand as a personal representative of U. S. Secretary of State Kellogg to attend the Council’s meeting. But no particular thought or attention was given to preparing a special reception for M. Quinones de Leon, representative of Spain in the Council and President of the Council for 1925.

About this time Senor de Leon must be feeling very important at the thought of sitting at the head of such an august assemblage, with the representatives of Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Belgium, Brazil, Czecho-Slovakia, Sweden and Uruguay ranged about him under his direction. But the League is yet such a loosely knit body that the importance of its officers as such is small, and that the importance of those who attend meetings is only in proportion to the power of the nation which each represents.