THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS: Embarrassed Council

Someone is forever niggling about the Monroe Doctrine. Last week the Council of the League of Nations was faced with a note from Costa Rica requesting the Council officially to “interpret” the Doctrine and state just what it means.

A more embarrassing question could not have been asked of the League statesmen who assemble each September in placid Swiss Geneva. They were thoroughly vexed.

The Council proceeded to assemble for the 51st time, under the presidency of M. Hjalmar J. Procopé, the obscure though able Foreign Minister of Finland. It was his turn—alphabetically—to preside. Perhaps he inwardly cursed the alphabet as he scanned Costa Rica’s embarrassing question.

Clearly the League could not define a doctrine which U. S. statesmen have so often stretched or shrunk to suit their convenience, since 1823, when it was vaguely stated by U. S. President James Monroe (1817-25). Sometimes the Doctrine is shrunk to mean little more than that the U. S. will attempt to discourage European intermeddling in Latin America. Occasionally it is stretched to cover U. S. intermeddling in Latin America of a sort which Europeans call “frankly imperialistic.”

No one really knows what the Monroe Doctrine means, but anyone may read what President Monroe said:

“. . . The occasion [is now] judged proper for asserting, as a principle, in which the right and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European power. . . .”

“We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. . . .”

Under these circumstances the League Council had to weasel, did. Presiding Finn Hjalmar Procopé refused to allow Costa Rica’s question to come up for consideration in open Council, but easily obtained the endorsements of his colleagues for a confidential note to Costa Rica which he personally concocted. This epistle, while neither defining nor interpreting the Monroe Doctrine, felicitated Costa Rica in glowing terms, and suavely referred her to the U. S. State Department for further information.

New Fishbowl. Up to last week the Council had always sat in a small, glass enclosed room, scurrilously famed as “The Goldfish Bowl.” Originally the “bowl” was the conservatory of an old hotel, which hotel is now the musty Secretariat of the League of Nations. During the Summer the old “Fishbowl” was demolished and a new once, twice as large, built at a cost of $15,000.

The Diplomatic Gold Fish, still glass enclosed, now sit upon a dais, exposed to the pitiless peering of visitors and correspondents comfortably seated throughout the “bowl.”

Old Woman. All prospect that a new $4,000,000 League Secretariat may be built, as planned (TIME, March 19), has been temporarily blocked by one old Englishwoman. She, Mrs. Barton, widow of a British consul, owns a wedge of property, cutting straight across the approved League site. Mrs. Barton, 79, refuses to sell. Gossip has it that two of her grandparents died on the further side of 90.

Potent Absentees. The Council made no more than a pretense of doing business, last week, because two members of the Anglo-Franco-German “Big Three” were absent. Great Britain was represented not by famed be-monacled Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain (See Great Britain, Sick Minister), but by that garrulous imperialist Baron Cushendun (TIME, April 2). France was able to send her astute, shaggy, sleepy-eyed Foreign Minister, Aristide Briand, as usual. Germany was represented not by her foremost politician and veteran Foreign Minister, Dr. Gustav Stresemann, but by her new Socialist Prime Minister, Herr Hermann Müller (TIME, June 25).

Other Prime Ministers present were: smart, florid, Hale-Fellow, William Lyon Mackenzie King (Canada); spry, white-whiskered Eleutherios Venizelos (Greece); tall stoop-shouldered beak-nosed Mgr. Ignaz Seipl (Austria); Scandinavian Spellbinder Johan Ludwig Mowinckel (Norway).

Muller’s Purpose. The appearance of Herr Müller for Germany, instead of Dr. Stresemann, was due to a seldom mentioned but important fact. Prime Minister Müller is the first Socialist to head the German Cabinet j, many a year, and the one issue on which he can appeal to both his own supporters and the more conservative parties of Germany is Evacuation of the Rhineland.

By bustling off to the League and personally agitating for a 100% German Rhineland, Herr Müller unquestionably hoped to gain kudos at home. Since Dr. Stresemann has kudos to spare and is still troubled by his kidneys (TIME, May 28 et seq.) he did not mind staying away.

Dr. Müller’s speech loomed as the chief object of expectancy as Delegates to the League Assembly began to pour into Geneva for their forthcoming session.