THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS: Briand’s Miracle

The father of French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand was the jovial keeper of a cozy inn at Nantes. The son at first became a barrister, defending poor clients who sought him at the inn. Strangely this scene was re-enacted last week in Geneva. Clients: representatives of all the Powers and half the nations of Europe. Briand: still Briand. Inn: the white, sumptuous Hotel des Bergues, overlooking Lac Leman and Overlooked by Towering Mont Blanc.

Officially the 47th session of the Council of the League of Nations was going forward at the League Secretariat; but smart correspondents watched closest the pageant of statesmen at Br’er Briand’s inn. Countries:

Poland & Lithuania. From Warsaw straight to the Hotel des Bergues came, last week, Dictator Marshal Josef Pilsudski. His red and gold salon carriage*blazoning the white eagle of Poland had barely stopped at the Geneva station when French Consul General Ame LeRoy stepped aboard and gently took in tow the tigerish Marshal. Bystanders smiled when this arch-militarist appeared in a civilian suit and soft felt hat. They sobered, however, as his hand snapped automatically to return a salute and he stalked from the station with long, dynamic strides….

At the Hotel des Bergues astute Aristide Briand greeted Pilsudski with a neat reference to the days when they were fellow radicals.†“My old friend,” he said, “we see now how useful it is to be a Socialist. Here you are Premier Marshal and Dictator of your country while I hold the record for the number of times** I have been Premier of mine.” Seemingly the Marshal (a Socialist turned Autocrat) minded not this sally.

After luncheon— at which the Dictator appeared as a Polish general with sword and spurs— both statesmen settled quietly to the business which had brought Marshal Pilsudski to Geneva; the Polish-Lithuanian frontier crisis (TIME, Dec. 12). Already M. Briand was in confidential possession of all the facts. On previous days he had several times received the Prime Minister of Lithuania, stocky, spiky-haired Professor Augustine Valdemaras. There had been a four-hour session of the League Council at which the issue had been argued hotly back and forth between M. Valdemaras and August Zaleski, Foreign Minister of Poland, who preceded Pilsudski to Geneva. The Council had even laid down provisional terms of settlement—terms not wholly agreed to by stubborn Prime Minister Valdemaras.

Thus the scene, and upon it Marshal Pilsudski must make his inevitably melodramatic appearance with good effect— not the reverse. During the afternoon and most of the evening JJ. Briand coached and perhaps coaxed the Marshal. Next morning the impromptu melodrama was played out at a secret session of the League Council. But details soon leaked. . . .

The session began with Pilsudski and Valdemaras bristling silently at one another across the Council’s horseshoe table, while the proposed details of settlement were droningly read. Suddenly Pilsudski interrupted in a hoarse voice: “Gentlemen, I have not heard the word peace mentioned. I came here to hear that word. If I do not hear it, I will return to a place where the word war may be heard.”

When an instant of astonished silence had ensued, the Marshal stamped to his feet, flung a blazing glance about him and shouted: “I AM GOING!” Amid confusion, cries, expostulations, Pilsudski was persuaded back into his seat. . . Then, leaning forward he suddenly shot out a long pointing arm and finger at M. Valdemaras. “I have a definite question to put to the honorable representative of Lithuania,” he rasped then shouted: “IS IT PEACE, 0R WAR?”

Bewildered, M. Valemaras managed to reply: “If he really means that he wants peace, I will say peace.’ ”

“That is not enough!” cried Pilsudski and furious recriminations burst between the two Dictators each excitedly shouting snatches of French mixed with Polish or Lithuanian. It was, of course, M Aristide Briand who eased between them, speaking as a father to naughty children. “You both mean the same thing!” he said. “You have got to stop. You both love each other. It is absolutely necessary.”

From the instant the diplomatic miracle was wrought both dictators subsided. Within twelve hours the technical “state of war” along the Lithuano-Polish frontier, which has existed since 1920,* was declared terminated by a resolution of the Council of the League of Nations— both Lithuania and Poland concurring.

The Council further ruled that all points of difference between these countries shall be negotiated through a special League commission.

Britain & Russia. The evolution at Geneva last week of a scheme which was called the “Astern Locarno” brought whole troops of statesmen to the hotel of M. Briand. He returned the visits of two: 1) British Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain; and 2) German Foreign Minister Dr. Gustav Stresemann.

What was in the air was a Franco-Russian proposal that interlocking peace pacts should be signed between all the Baltic States and with Russia, Germany, France and Poland. To bind these pacts they should receive the weighty signature of Great Britain—as did the Locarno Treaty— but at present Britain has broken off relations with Russia. What to do?

One of the cleverest bits of diplomacy engineered by M. Briand, last week, was a 55-minute meeting be tween Sir Austen Chamberlain and the Soviet plenipotentiary, Maxim Maximovitch Litvinov. Officially no agreement of any sort was reached during this conversation, but it meant that Britain and Russia are not irretrievably out of contact and broached the possibility of British support Locarno.” for a future “Eastern Locarno.”

Rumania & Hungary. To Barrister Briand, last week, telegraphed a political client who said that he lay grieviously ill at Bucharest. This client was M. Nicholas Titulescu, Foreign Minister of Rumania: the chief Balkan ally of France. What M. Titulescu wanted was that the League Council should postpone action on the vexed question of what shall be done about Hungarian nationals in Rumania whose property has been expropriated by the Rumanian Government….

To see that settlement of this question should not be postponed, last week, there had come to Geneva the Premier of Hungary Count Stephen Bethlen de Bethlen. He, though potent at home, was no match, at Geneva, for M. Braind who shortly persuaded the Council to delay even consideration of this issue until the next Council meeting in March. Chagrined Hungarians remembered that it was M. Briand who, last March, got the Council to postpone this same matter until the present December.

Official Steps. Although the unofficial acts of M. Briand and other League statesmen, last week, were of preponderant importance, the Council took certain official steps. It: 1) Authorized a $30,000,000 loan for Greece, to be raised in Great Britain and the U.S. under League sponsorship; 2) Approved registration with the League, last week, of the Franco-Jugoslav treaty of friendship and accord (TIME, Dec. 5); 3) Listened to the report of the League’s Opium Commission which was read by its rapporteur, white-haired Senator Raoul Dandurand of Canada. He, trenchant, charged that traffic in illicit drugs is conducted by persons “with huge financial resources” in nearly every land. The Council then voted impotent concurrence with recommendations made by Senator Dandurand as to how this traffic might be suppressed; 4) Made public, in emasculated form, the second part of the report presented last September by the League of Nations Advisory Committee empowered to investigate the so-called international white slave traffic.

White Slaves. The charge that France is the chief “country of supply” for “white slaves” had to be parried, last week, by Aristide Briand amid all his other worries. Not only did this charge loom as a broad hint in the emasculated “Part No. 2” of the League’s “white slave” report, published last week, but it was flatly made in the original and suppressed report—copies of which have leaked out.

M. Briand, before rallying to defend France, made close inspection of the League committee’s findings, noted a certain fact. Then, cried he, in an impassioned address to the Council: “This mass of information appears to have been gleaned from self-confessed exploiters of women or from other persons of such dubious morals that their testimony cannot escape suspicion. . . .”

Persons who ignored this forensic defense were inclined to believe that the League investigators are right in believing that: 1) An international traffic in women (with and without their consent) is steadily carried on through smoothly organized and richly financed channels; 2) The prevailing demand for French women makes that country a leading source of supply but also causes many women recruited from Eastern Europe to declare falsely that they are French; 3) The chief regions of demand are Egypt and South America; and the leading cities of consumption are Alexandria, Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro; 4) The chief European port through which “white slaves” pass is Marseille, France; but Lisbon, Portugal, and Piraeus, Greece, are auxiliary ports of shipment in which conditions are—if possible— more debased than at Marseille; 5) The Anglo-Saxon countries scarcely figure in the international traffic but recruit their “white slaves” locally.

* Poles seized this car in the last days of the imperial Russia. Built for the Tsar, it was one of a train of cars used when Nicholas II deigned to pass through the then Russian territory of Poland en route to Europe. Because Russian railways are of a special wide guage, the Tsar had another train for use nearer home.

†When the First Socialist International was organized at London in 1900, Briand and Pilsudski were hotheads among a group of radicals who have log since turned moderate or conservative, for example: Alexandre Millerand, later President of France; and James Ramsay MacDonald, now the steady helmsman of British Labor.

** He was ten times Premier of France.

* When the Poles seized the Lithuanian city of Vilna which they still hold.