THE LEAGUE: Old Diplomacy

(See front cover)

An angry Poland, an expectant Russia, a wailing China and an Irish Free State brimming with cussedness were on the capable hands of French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou at Geneva last week, and he is 72. Never once did the verve, élan and practical wisdom of this Gascon grandfather falter. He is the grand practitioner of the Old Diplomacy. He knows what his country wants and is not ashamed to live like a discriminating prince while getting it. Last week his immediate purpose was to wangle Soviet Russia into the League of Nations but he was preparing other, greater moves in the endless chess game of international statesmanship. With the clear conscience of a Frenchman who was in his childhood when German troops occupied Paris in 1871, M. Barthou is out to encircle the Nazi Reich with a chain of alliances calculated to ensure that Paris shall never be bombed, shelled or occupied again.

From crowned Romanovs to cap-wearing Bolsheviks, M. Barthou has known his Russians for nearly two generations. In 1896 he was Minister of Interior and as such responsible for the safety in France of newly-crowned Tsar Nicholas II who came to throw a magnificent bridge across the Seine in memory of his father Tsar Alexander III. Today le Pont Alexandre-Trois is still the most magnificent in Paris and across it in his long-snouted Renault limousine M. Barthou has ridden in animated conversation with Comrade Maxim Maximovitch Litvinoff, the roly-poly one time traveling salesman who is now Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Comrade Litvinoff was hovering last week just beyond the Swiss frontier in the tiny French village of Douvaine, waiting for M. Barthou to send the word that would mean for Bolshevik Russia a grand entry with appropriate nourish into the League of Nations. In one of their frequent talks by telephone last week. Comrade Litvinoff grew so impatient that he hung up on M. Barthou in vexation, but the Gascon grandfather only chuckled, “Tiens, tiens! Ces enfants! They must learn patience!”

The Irish made trouble first. Soon after the League Council and Assembly convened fortnight ago, the diplomacy of M. Barthou had seemed to remove all obstacles likely to block Russia from being received into the League with a permanent seat on the Council (TIME, Sept. 17). Poland, having first held out for a permanent seat for herself if Russia got one, finally backed down. The scruples of Argentina and Portugal had been overcome. All that remained was to get quietly on paper an invitation to Russia and a Russian acceptance in exact legal forms which would be mutually acceptable to both the Soviet Union and the majority of League states issuing the invitation. Erupted at this point President Eamon de Valera of the Irish Free State.

The tall, teacherish shamrock waver from Dublin did not rise to oppose the entry of Russia. He endorsed it but rose to champion the idea that the few small nations still opposed should be invited to air their views in open assembly. Shaking a bony finger at his pet aversion, British Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon, and at M. Barthou, the Free State’s de Valera cried: “The whole question of procedure should be properly considered, instead of in hotel rooms. . . . What is it reasonable for Russia to expect? She naturally wants to assure herself before applying for membership that she is not going to have the humiliation of having her application rejected. That is a thing that we can understand, that our peoples can understand, and that we can understand in this Assembly as well as in some hotel room! That being so why not state it openly here?”

In the Free State this speech may have made President de Valera seem a bigger man, but at Geneva it stirred a hornet’s nest among the small minority of small nations, such as Switzerland and Panama, still hostile to Russia’s entry. The Swiss Government, strongly conservative, grew so excited that Swiss reporters at Berne conjectured fantastically, “If Russia is admitted we may resign and the League may have to move out of Switzerland.” It took M. Barthou, Sir John and the Italian Chief Delegate, tall, hollow-cheeked Baron Pompeo Aloisi, about 24 hours to get the drafting work going quietly forward again in hotel rooms without protest.

Geneva then had leisure to contemplate a bust of President Arthur Henderson of the nearly defunct Disarmament Conference presented last week by a Hungarian newspaper which was almost alone in printing the full text of the speech which poor, neglected “Uncle Arthur” seized this occasion to make. Another complete fiasco was the speech of assassinated Chancellor Dollfuss’ successor, dry, circumloquacious Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg. For almost an hour he enunciated such involved platitudes as “this is no time for retrospective discussion as to whether Austria was bound to become what she now is, but I must urge that she must be preserved as she now is. That and that only, is the fundamental principle of Austria’s internal and external independence.”

Beck v. Versailles. Vastly different was the impact on the League of Nations last week of that stern, ramrod-backed bean pole in human form, Polish Foreign Minister Josef Beck. Only when the craze for yo-yo tops struck Warsaw two years ago was Colonel Beck seen really to unbend, pumping his yo-yo up & down on its string with pleased dexterity. In the past year the Colonel has been on dangerous ground and he trod it firmly last week.

The nature of that ground went back directly to M. Barthou’s general diplomatic background. It was he as French War Minister in 1921 who wrote the military clauses of the Franco-Polish Alliance. This alone enabled the re-created Polish State to maintain itself against Soviet Russia and against Germany’s desire to recover the Polish Corridor. In the whole post-War period up to last winter Poland was regarded as the fortunate and presumably grateful protege of France.

There had been a slight rift when Benito Mussolini drew France, Britain and Germany into his Four-Power Pact (TIME, May 29, 1933, et seq.). This came to nothing but Poland, piqued at not having been invited into Il Duce’s prospective club and suspicious of France for joining without her, smoldered with resentment. Warsaw was thus in receptive mood when Berlin proposed Adolf Hitler’s most statesmanly idea thus far, namely, that the Polish Corridor question should be put officially on ice for ten years by a non-aggression pact between the two countries. This was duly signed (TIME. Feb. 4). It profoundly vexed France and sent M. Barthou, who had just come in as Foreign Minister in the National Union Cabinet of Premier Gaston Doumergue, off on his alliance-mending tour of Europe (see below).

The point in Geneva last week was that Polish Dictator Pilsudski and German Dictator Hitler, both highly emotional, impulsive and changeable, find themselves for the moment in firm accord. Any nation in accord with Hitler must chime in with his aversion to the Treaty of Versailles, the very document that re-created Poland after her 300-year subjugation. The climax of paradox was reached in Geneva last week when Marshal Pilsudski’s long, lean Colonel Beck rose to make a bold declaration unique in League history and tantamount to tearing up a portion of the Treaty of Versailles.

Poland Into Greatness? Signed at Versailles integrally with the main treaty was the Polish Minority Treaty, vesting in the League authority to compel the Polish Government to give adequate protection to Jews and other “minority peoples” in Poland. Without success Poland has several times urged the Great Powers to put their minority peoples under similar protection. Last week Colonel Beck arose to rasp: “Pending the bringing into force of a general and uniform system for the protection of minorities, my Government finds itself compelled to refuse, as from today, all co-operation with international organizations [i. e. the League] in the matter of supervision of the application by Poland of a system of minority protection.”

That meant that Poland was daring to scrap a portion of her Versailles obligations—as Germany would like to scrap all hers. Pilsudski was playing Hitler’s game, providing a test case before the League. For France, for Louis Barthou, what?

The most that could be done was to organize, if possible, a joint rebuke to Poland by the three Great Powers now dominating the League. France, Britainand Italy. Overnight M. Barthou sought the co-operation of Sir John and Baron Aloisi. The Frenchman’s role was exquisitely delicate, for should he himself crack down too hard on Colonel Beck, Poland might take such offense as to cast her vote in the League Council against admitting Russia, and the Council can act only by unanimity. In Warsaw, meanwhile, streets had been beflagged as if in celebration of a military victory and the Pilsudski Press was hailing “the historical day of Poland’s liberation from humiliation and unjust minority treaties” and “Poland’s emergence as a Great Power.”

On the morrow tall, glacial Sir John Simon chastised Colonel Beck before the Assembly with the menace, “It will not be possible for any state to release itself from obligations of this kind by unilateral action.” M. Barthou followed with a speech in the firm but supple tradition of the Old Diplomacy. France would no more stand for treaty-breaking than Britain, he warned, but “France as the friend and ally of Poland” was sure that the Warsaw Government would reconsider before setting “an example which other countries might be tempted to follow”; after all, the very existence of Poland depended upon the sanctity of treaties. Italy’s towering Baron Aloisi followed and served notice that Mussolini will stand no nonsense from Pilsudski. By next day Colonel Beck, while sticking technically to his guns, was protesting that the minority peoples in Poland will continue to enjoy under Polish law every right and privilege they ever received by intervention of the League. Nonetheless the Polish delegation was completely snowed under with passionate protests bearing Jewish names.

Telegram by Limousine. Welcome at this juncture was a diversion by Chinese Delegate Quo Tai-chi who wailed: “There is no doubt that continued military occupation [by Japan] of China’s northeastern provinces constitutes the gravest existing danger of another war.” After Mr. Quo had declared “Russia is the arch between Europe and Asia, hence China welcomes Russia to membership in the League,” he received warm congratulations from the Great Powers and M. Barthou got back to the business of steering the Soviet Union in.

If Poland is wavering, Czechoslovakia stands firmer than ever in alliance with France. This year “Europe’s Smartest Little Statesman.” Foreign Minister Eduard Benes of Czechoslovakia, is taking his turn as President of the League Council. To oblige M. Barthou last week M. Benes paid Russia the unprecedented compliment of popping into his limousine and riding as Council President 20 miles out to Comrade Litvinoff’s village. He brought an invitation for Russia to join the League signed by 30 countries whose signatures M. Barthou had obtained. Comrade Litvinoff “telegraphed” Russia’s acceptance on a blank which M. Benes stuffed into his pocket before dashing back to Geneva. President Benes convoked the Council. Then Poland, at M. Barthou’s behest, was constrained to vote for Russia to receive a permanent Council seat as soon as the Assembly goes through the motions of voting the thoroughly invited Soviet Union into the League. This was considered last week a mere formality, since M. Barthou had apparently corralled more than enough votes to put through the Assembly balloting this week. In Paris, therefore, the Gascon grandfather was again something of a hero. There remained, however, the fateful issue of his larger scheme, the Eastern Locarno Pact.

Eastern Locarno. Louis Barthou was born the son of a poor tinsmith. His family scrimped to pay for the education that turned him out a brilliant lawyer. All his life he has been a charmer, naturally eloquent, instinctively elegant, yet with plenty of brain power and force. His rise in the Chamber and through the cabinets of men now mostly forgotten was meteoric. In the year before the War he formed his first Cabinet and as Premier boldly forced through unpopular legislation lengthening the term of French military service. This gave la Patrie immeasurably better trained young men to shoulder her rifles and fire her 753 when the War broke. In those days M. Barthou was one of the first middle-aged statesmen to be hailed as “The Savior of France”— and to lose his soldier son.

Last winter Oldster Barthou had been on the shelf as a Senator for years when the Stavisky crisis made the prestige of his name a needed asset in the present Doumergue Cabinet of National Union. To everyone’s surprise the 72-year-old Foreign Minister turned out to be more active than almost any of his predecessors. He was the first French Cabinet Minister ever to visit Poland. To do him honor Dictator Pilsudski last April canceled a pleasure trip to Egypt. Amid tremendous acclaim he was feted by Czechoslovakia at Prague, exchanged literary reminiscences with President Thomas Garrigue Masaryk. But for Louis Barthou the most fun was his Balkan tour.

In Bucharest the Rumanian Chamber made him an honorary subject of King Carol II and gave him the first Rumanian passport valid for the Soviet Union, which he had just induced His Majesty to recognize (TIME, July 9). On a triumphal progress up the Danube to Jugoslavia, Oldster Barthou was welcomed by athletic young subjects of King Alexander who swam out to greet him with French flags clenched in their teeth.

When this swing around Europe was over Louis Barthou had the Little Entente (Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Jugoslavia) pretty completely in his pocket, how completely appeared last week when Czechoslovak League Council President Benes gladly ran the Frenchman’s errands to Litvinoff.

The Gascon grandfather’s most significant journey was to London (TIME, July 16). There M. Barthou did more than patch up a quarrel which he had had earlier in the year at Geneva with Sir John Simon. He convinced Leader of the British Conservative (majority) Party Stanley Baldwin that the Nazi Reich is a real menace to the peace of Europe. It was after M. Barthou’s visit that M. Baldwin startled the world by declaring for His Majesty’s Government that the British frontier is now on the Rhine.

The Barthou effort to encircle Germany was originally rebuffed by Britain, but approved when he modified it into the form of an Eastern Locarno Pact that was to be signed by Russia, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Baltic States, all mutually pledging military aid to keep the present frontiers of Germany fixed (TIME, July 23).

In his Old Diplomatist’s heart M. Barthou has been sure that Germany would refuse to sign. Last week this refusal was announced by German Foreign Minister Baron Constantin von Neurath—thus proving one of M. Barthou’s main points, that Germany will not agree to abide by her present frontiers. He will now return to his original program of an Eastern Pact signed by Germany’s neighbors, plus Russia and, if possible, Italy. In such a chain of alliance, not in Germany’s pledge on parchment however fine, Louis Barthou would prefer to put his trust. “The solemn promise of Germany,” he has said, “is not enough for me.” Last week he announced that next month he expects to confer with Benito Mussolini in Rome, seeking Italy’s signature for his ring around Germany.

From the German viewpoint Louis Barthou is thus the very old Devil. Rightly Adolf Hitler was in a white fury last week at the seeming entente between France and Russia. It was this which caused Dictator Hitler to egg on Dictator Pilsudski and Colonel Beck. In Berlin the Realmleader was reported to have stormed to an official of the Wilhelmstrasse last week, “If France and Russia have an alliance, then let this alliance come out into the open!” But such is not the method of the Old Diplomacy. Without an alliance France drew England into the Great War and M. Barthou is content to make for the moment an entente with Russia.

In a last minute burst of Swiss indignation against the Soviet Union, Swiss Chief Delegate Dr. Giuseppe Motta rehearsed how in 1918 Bolsheviks sacked the Swiss legation in Petrograd and recalled that Lenin once defined the League of Nations as “an institution of brigandage.” In a fiery peroration Dr. Motta drew chaos from the gallery and handclaps from a few delegates by branding the Soviet Union as the universal betrayer of religion. “Their churches in Russia are abandoned and fall in ruins,” cried Dr. Motta. “. . . Communism dissolves the family; it suppresses individual initiative; it abolishes private property. Russia is afflicted with the somber curse of famine.”