THE LEAGUE: Peace Will Be Made!

Article XVI of the League Covenant, officially in force last week, prohibits “all intercourse between nationals” of a Covenant-breaking State and other League States. Since the League has pronounced Italy a Covenant-breaking State, Geneva correspondents were on watch last week to see whether intercourse would be had by the Italian Chief Delegate Baron Pompeo Aloisi. Zealots said it would be a “League crime” if French Premier Pierre Laval or British Foreign Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare had dealings of any sort with the Fascist Baron or even spoke to him.

In Paris, as Premier Laval boarded a wagon-lit for Geneva, he snapped positively, “Peace will be made! It will be made despite malevolent indiscretion, spiteful controversies and misleading reports.”

In London the departure of Sir Samuel Hoare was pungent with measured disdain. As only a born Englishman can, Sir Samuel disdained Welsh David Lloyd George and everyone else who has suggested that a deal is in course of being consummated by Italian and French” diplomats with the British Foreign Office. “They are sowing the seeds of suspicion,” said the Foreign Minister. “They are playing the game of creating mysteries where mysteries do not exist.”

Arriving at Geneva, Sir Samuel at once invited Baron Pompeo Aloisi to his hotel. Next day Captain Eden sat in “Flying Sam’s” hotel bedroom conference with the Fascist Baron, who in turn was twice closeted with Premier Laval.

“The Deal,” Revealed little by little in Geneva leaks last week was the current status of “The Deal” which Italians and French statesmen have been in course of making with the British (TIME, Oct. 14). In Paris its technical and colonial aspects have now been negotiated outside the fevered atmosphere of Britain’s General Election by Mr. Maurice Peterson, the quietly efficient British Foreign Office civil servant charged with Ethiopian affairs. Mr. Peterson and his French counterpart, Count Rene de Saint-Quentin, placed at the disposal of Sir Samuel, Premier Laval and Baron Aloisi last week the negotiated basis. Next logical step was to get “The Deal’s” elements up into a respectable League atmosphere, and for this purpose the Great Powers turned to “Dear Little Belgium.” Hot from Brussels to Geneva went Belgian Premier Professor Paul van Zeeland. Up he popped before the League’s Sanctions Committee of 52 states and asked that Britain and France receive an unlimited “mandate to seek the elements of a solution.” An interjection by Poland that so momentous a decision would have to come before the League Council prevented the Committee from adopting it as a formal motion, but without a vote it was adopted anyway when the Portuguese chairman of the Committee intoned: “The members of the League assembled in this Committee have given it their full approval.”

Thus dickering and dealing which continue to take place physically outside the Palace of the Nations were technically brought “within the framework of the League,” although only two League States are to go on trying to make “The Deal” with Italy. In Pierre (“Honest Broker”) Laval’s entourage indignation was expressed that Socialist and anti-Fascist officials in France have been doing their best to wreck “The Deal” and embarrass His Majesty’s Government by premature disclosures. For M. Laval, it was said, “From now on he will deny every disclosure! Absolute secrecy at this stage is imperative for success and the cause of Peace.”

Sanctions— With Captain Eden as ringmaster, Nov. 18 was set as the date on which all League States will apply such of the proposed sanctions against Italy as their governments have ratified by that time. Most of the sanctions seemed likely to be applied by most League States. To the chagrin of loyal Leaguophiles, famed “Proposal No. 5,” the only active Proposal, under which League States would assist each other to compensate for losses incurred through application of sanctions, had not been ratified last week by Britain. In a love feast of honeyed speeches the 52 nations which voted last week for Nov. 18, omitted without exception to denounce Italy, mostly spoke of her as their “old friend” and pledged “continued loyalty” to the League Covenant. They nodded sagely when Premier Laval recalled, as meaningly as possible last week, that only last January he sat down with Premier Mussolini and signed a “treaty”—one of the quid pro quos being a free hand for Italy in Ethiopia.