ISSUE: Summer 1942
Several years ago, after one of the many sessions of the League of Nations, which ended with the tabling of an important question, I travelled back to Paris from Geneva with Edouard Herriot, then head of the French delegation to the League. In his sleeping compartment, filled almost entirely by his massive body, we talked of the poor results of the session we had just attended and the slight prospects of achieving any tangible success through our discussions. For some time Herriot puffed silently on his short curved pipe. Then, with a sagacious smile, he said: “The case is not hopeless. A Geneve on n’enterre pas . . . on embaume.”
Since the closing of the League at the outbreak of the war in September, 1939, I have often recalled Herriot’s words. From the moment when German boots trampled across the border of the Free City of Danzig, the League has been buried in a silence so complete that not even the humorous magazine writers and cartoonists with whom it was once a favorite theme have paid any attention to it; and the frequent bons mots of statesmen about the Geneva institution seem to be a thing of the past. Whenever the peace we are fighting for is under discussion and the blueprints for future generations are being drawn up, mention of the League is sedulously avoided; and it seems possible to say of it what the tactless Empress Marie-Louise says to her son in Rostand’s “L’Aig-lon:” “On n’a meme pas prononce le nom de votre pere. . . .” It is nevertheless true that not only will all future ideas for the organization of the civilized world rest on the same principles upon which the League was built, and the future codes of freedom again and again imitate the old League Covenant and its twenty-six articles, but also that more and more people will realize that the League, although dead, is not buried. It may be embalmed, but it has not returned to dust.
If a general peace conference ever meets again, no matter in what form, the fact will emerge before it that the League still exists and that, before any new organization can be created, the League must be either definitely disbanded or recalled to life. Contrary to the widespread impression that the League is dead and buried, it is a fact that up until today its activities have not been terminated by any official act; moreover, certain sections of the League are still quietly continuing their work, thus preventing the slow-moving machinery from growing rusty. Like the small Californian oil-well owner who produces two quarts of oil a day in order not to lose his rights of ownership, the Geneva oil-well of peace produces a few drops of international co-operation a day in order to prove its right to exist and to maintain itself till the dawn of a better day. Moreover, neither in law nor in fact is there any way of disbanding the League. The Covenant was destined for “eternity,” and its articles allow no one, not even all the League members together, to extinguish the light of the organization. To obtain the formal dissolution of the League, an appeal would have to be made to the Hague Court of Arbitration; but today the building of this highest international court is occupied by a German field Kommandantur, and Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Hitler’s governor of Holland, sits at the table which once served for the deliberations of the most respected court in the world. By occupying Holland, Hitler removed the only threat to the juridical existence of the League.
The present activity of the League, although reduced to a minimum, is still quite significant. Four of its sections and a powerful auxiliary organization have been saved from destruction—like so many of Europe’s most precious institutions—by fleeing to America. Three sections of the permanent League Secretariat are functioning at Princeton, New Jersey. The financial section continues, as of old, to study the budgets of individual states, to investigate the gold backing of the different currencies and the banking systems of various countries. The economic section, whose reports once influenced world economy, is still under the direction of Loveday, the great economic expert who gave his name to these reports. The transportation and communication section, which once worked for a world system of roads and railways, is today limiting its work to statistical research. In addition to these three sections in Princeton, there is the opium section, which is now functioning in Washington. Formerly this section was extremely energetic. Japan repeatedly protested against its activities, especially when they led to the discovery that the Japanese war machine used drugs as a weapon for military conquest. For some time the opium section, too, was reduced to purely statistical work, but since December 7, 1941, it has received several important requests from the State Department. There is a certain tragic irony in the fact that the first important publication of the League since the war emanates from the formerly much ridiculed Commission Consultative du Trafic de l’Opium et Autres Drogues Nuisibles.
More important than these four sections of the League in exile is the International Labor Office, which has set up its office in Montreal. The last director of this great organization was the present American ambassador to England, John G. Winant, and its last vice-director was one of the present political leaders of the Free French movement, Tixier. It no longer plays any part in determining the working hours of labor in various countries, in the prevention of strikes or in the establishment of systems of social insurance; yet its importance is still much more than that of a mere research office. In 1941, the New York Congress of the I.L.O. brought political figures from all countries together for the first time since the outbreak of World War II. At the official meetings of this Congress, true to the old Geneva tradition, there was much inconsequential talk; but outside the meeting hall, in the corridors, which in Geneva were called, the “Pas perdus”—literally the “lost steps”—the Polish-Czech agreement came into being, and it is of decisive importance for the future of Europe.
During this congress a few facts about the current activities of the League were brought out. Eighty-seven League officials live in Princeton, Washington, and Montreal; last year they met at a conference in Princeton under the chairmanship of Dr. Arthur Sweetser. Twenty-eight League officials continue to work in Geneva. True, they are mostly servants, gardeners or porters. Nevertheless the “dead” League still employs one hundred and fifteen people—as against eight hundred before the war.
Of the prominent League officials who for many years, mostly from behind the scenes, influenced European politics, more than the majority of oft-photographed ministers and ambassadors, almost all have escaped the present sterility of the great embalmed institution. Winant holds an important ambassadorship; Tixier is de Gaulle’s right hand. Hoden, former chief of Cabinet to Joseph Avenol, the General Secretary of the League, is today the chief of cabinet to the Free French commander in London. Dr. Pelt, the Dutch chief of the Information Section, is one of the leading members of the Dutch government-in-exile. Marie Ginsberg, the Polish librarian of the League, is at work on an important scientific book in New York. Dr. Egon Wertheimer, a prominent member of the Social Section, is a university professor in Washington. Dr. Aladar Metall, formerly the sociological expert of the I.L.O., is today employed by the Brazilian government in Rio de Janeiro. The last General Secretary of the League, the Frenchman Joseph Avenol, is working behind the scenes in Vichy just as he formerly worked behind the scenes in Geneva. A Royalist, a friend of all the Fascists, an admirer of Germany and Italy, Avenol quickly found his way from the grave-diggers of the League to the grave-diggers of the country which once gave the League its best men and its best ideas.
Geneva itself hardly remembers the brilliant days of Briand, Stresemann, and Sir Austen Chamberlain and those thrilling sessions of the League on which the world pinned its hopes. In the Cornavin station at Geneva, which was completed in 1935, there is an immense map of Europe on which all the capitals and important cities are indicated in large letters; but Geneva is indicated by a dove of peace. This allegory was of dubious validity even in 1935, the year of the Ethiopian conflict and the suicide of the League; today a more fitting symbol for the most beautiful of Swiss cities would be a graveyard.
The new League Palace which measures eighteen thousand square meters and four hundred and forty thousand cubic meters is one of the largest buildings in the world. Built at a cost of nearly ten million dollars and inaugurated in 1938, the year of Munich, it now stands entirely empty. Of its four hundred and eighty offices, four hundred and sixty-one are deserted. Of its equipment, five hundred and forty typewriters, five hundred and seventy desks, and eleven hundred waste baskets have been sold. An unsuccessful effort was made to sell the entire building. The Swiss government, which was obliged to buy back the old League building, has stubbornly refused to take over the wonderful palace of white Brescian marble—a gift from Italy! Of all the offices only that of the General Secretary, Lester, who was formerly the League High Commissioner in Danzig, shows any sign of life. Of the twenty-eight League officials still remaining in Geneva, only eight do real League work. Lester’s private secretary, two librarians, one official of the Information Section, one chief of personnel, one accountant and one liaison officer for the American sections are the only persons beside the General Secretary still at work in the enormous palace. The General Secretary often types his own letters, and the chief librarian, the Austrian Baron, Dr. Breycha de Vauthier, must find all the books he needs himself among one hundred and eighty thousand volumes which constitute the League library.
A large section of the League Palace looks like a furniture warehouse. Numerous League officials who had to leave Geneva in a hurry were allowed to store their furniture in the Palace free of charge, and today its immense cellars are crowded with their dining tables, bureaus, and beds.
Naturally, the departure of the League representatives of sixty nations and the diplomats of fifty-eight has completely changed the aspect of Geneva. Today there is the sign “A Louer” on most of its private houses, and the lovely villas in the hills which rise on both sides of Lake Leman are “A Vendre.” In the course of one year five hundred and four auto license plates bearing the mark C.D. (Corps Diplomatique) were turned in to the authorities. The huge hotels are almost all closed. The numerous flagpoles from which the most exotic flags used to fly are now like trees robbed of their foliage by the winds of autumn. The “Globe,” that famous restaurant in the old town where “Monsieur Jean” used to wait on Laval, MacDonald, Briand, and Titulescu with equal politeness, is now frequented by Swiss salesmen. The victory of the natives over the foreigners—an oft-recurring phenomenon in the history of civilization—is most clearly revealed in the renowned “Bavaria” beer hall, “discovered” one day by Briand and Stresemann, where the Locarno conference was planned and which Litvinov last visited during the days of Munich. Instead of the innumerable Excellencies who used to crowd the “Bavaria,” Swiss soldiers today drink Swiss beer at its unvarnished tables. The Hotel Carlton, a few steps from the new League Building, which was the residence of the German delegation before Goebbels made his exodus, is closed, as is the Beaurivage, where Empress Elisabeth of Austria died, Benes and Haile Selassie lived, and the Balkan Pact was concluded. The Hotel Metropole—seat of the Japanese delegation—and the Hotel de Russie, where the South American delegations used to live, have also shut down. The last hotel to close was the one which saw the birth of the Disarmament Conference and the death of its chairman, Arthur Henderson. This hotel, whose shutters now blindly look down at the Lake is called, significantly enough, the Hotel de la Paix.
If Geneva has not become like all the other lovely little Swiss towns, it is because of the continuously expanding activities of the Red Cross. In addition to the building it already occupied, the Red Cross has rented the “Palais Elec-torale.” Its famous “grande salle,” in which so many League of Nations assemblies took place, is not comparable to the assembly room in the new Palace of the League, which could accommodate two thousand persons and for which on the occasion of its opening in 1937 the Aga Khan ordered 40,000 roses. This great assembly room is as deserted as the entire League. The growing number of war prisoners has repeatedly given rise to the suggestion that the Red Cross buy the League Palace. But the Red Cross is an organization that gives much and owns little. All the negotiations broke down because of its insufficient funds.
Oddly enough, the League itself possesses considerable funds, and—quite in line with the character of the Tolstoian “Living Corpse,”—no one has until now inherited this fortune. In 1941, when Vichy officially announced its withdrawal from the League, it proved impossible to learn the exact number of remaining members. People also wondered whether there was any meaning in France’s demonstration against this “dead” institution. In reality, the reasons for this move were chiefly financial. About forty states still belong to the League and they are still supposed to pay their membership dues. According to the last published statement (1938), the member states paid 20,806,753 Swiss francs, that is, about four million dollars, for the maintenance of the League. But its expenses have been considerably reduced in recent years, and last year the “Geneva Accountant” drew a balance which showed a strong moral deficit, but a considerable material surplus. As late as 1940, the League had a treasury of about eight million dollars, mostly in gold. Some of these reserves have been deposited in the United States. But the League does not have to live exclusively on the income of its past glamor: one summer morning in 1941, word was received that the British government was about to pay half of its yearly dues, amounting to about one hundred thousand dollars. More than any political combination, this gesture proves that the Allies have not yet entirely given up the League for lost. Money and food are being put into its grave, as they used to be put in the graves of dead kings.
It would be futile today to try to answer the question: Can the League ever be resurrected? In the perspective of the past decade and in the clear air of memory, it is beginning to be estimated at its true value. There is a growing realization of the fact that the League, which was born with the Versailles Treaty, suffered from the same weaknesses as the treaty itself: it lacked both the courage to smash the vanquished aggressors once and for all and the generosity to forgive them completely. The inadequacy of Versailles, which consisted in making the vanquished eternally dissatisfied without depriving them of the means of rebellion, also characterized the League Covenant. An article providing for sanctions against the aggressor, the famous Article XVI, was created; but no concrete steps were taken to enforce these theoretical sanctions. Japan was condemned for attacking Manchuria—but no one ventured to punish the aggressor. Sanctions were voted against Italy—but the powers shied away from applying them, when it came to the question of placing an embargo upon oil. Germany was forbidden to militarize the Rhineland—but a compromise was reached with Hitler. Again and again the League members sinned not only against the spirit of the Covenant, but also against its letter. Yet no law becomes bad just because it is broken. Actually, League intervention succeeded in preventing warlike conflicts between Persia and Russia (1920), Finland and Sweden (the Aland incident in 1920), Poland and Lithuania (1920), Panama and Costa Rica (1921), Greece and Italy (the Corfu incident in 1923), England and Persia (1932), Hungary and Yugoslavia (1934). Millions of men—for example, the Assyrians of Irak—were provided with new homes; material aid was given to China and Spain. The League collapsed not because it was bad, but because it was not good enough.
These considerations have little practical importance today. It is quite possible that after the war the victors will decide to do away with the old League; but even if this happens, it will be necessary to create a new League under a new name. It is, however, entirely possible that the existing machinery will be utilized in order to create a new organization. Even though the white palace in Geneva is deserted, nothing can kill the spirit which created it. On the walls of the now deserted Assembly Hall the following opening sentences of the Covenant can be read:
In order to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war, by the prescription of open, just and honorable relations between nations, by the firm establishment of the understandings of international law as the actual rule of conduct among governments, and by the maintenance of justice and a scrupulous respect for all treaty obligations in the dealings of organized peoples with one another, the High Contracting Parties agree to this Covenant of the League of Nations.
The principles of international morality are summed up in these words, and the Nobel Prize winner, Lord Robert Cecil, was undoubtedly right when he recently said: “Whenever civilized nations seriously try to live together in peace, they francs, that is, about four million dollars, for the maintenance of the League. But its expenses have been considerably reduced in recent years, and last year the “Geneva Accountant” drew a balance which showed a strong moral deficit, but a considerable material surplus. As late as 1940, the League had a treasury of about eight million dollars, mostly in gold. Some of these reserves have been deposited in the United States. But the League does not have to live exclusively on the income of its past glamor: one summer morning in 1941,
word was received that the British government was about to pay half of its yearly dues, amounting to about one hundred thousand dollars. More than any political combination, this gesture proves that the Allies have not yet entirely given up
the League for lost. Money and food are being put into its grave, as they used to be put in the graves of dead kings.
It would be futile today to try to answer the question: Can the League ever be resurrected? In the perspective of
the past decade and in the clear air of memory, it is beginning to be estimated at its true value. There is a growing realization of the fact that the League, which was born with the Versailles Treaty, suffered from the same weaknesses as the
treaty itself: it lacked both the courage to smash the vanquished aggressors once and for all and the generosity to forgive them completely. The inadequacy of Versailles, which consisted in making the vanquished eternally dissatisfied
without depriving them of the means of rebellion, also characterized the League Covenant. An article providing for sanctions against the aggressor, the famous Article XVI, was created; but no concrete steps were taken to enforce
these theoretical sanctions. Japan was condemned for attacking Manchuria—but no one ventured to punish the aggressor. Sanctions were voted against Italy—but the powers shied away from applying them, when it came to the
question of placing an embargo upon oil. Germany was forbidden to militarize the Rhineland—but a compromise was reached with Hitler. Again and again the League members sinned not only against the spirit of the Covenant, but also against its letter. Yet no law becomes bad just because it is
broken. Actually, League intervention succeeded in preventing warlike conflicts between Persia and Russia (1920), Finland and Sweden (the Aland incident in 1920), Poland and Lithuania (1920), Panama and Costa Rica (1921),
Greece and Italy (the Corfu incident in 1923), England and Persia (1932), Hungary and Yugoslavia (1934). Millions of men—for example, the Assyrians of Irak—were provided with new homes; material aid was given to China and Spain. The League collapsed not because it was bad, but because it was not good enough.
These considerations have little practical importance today, It is quite possible that after the war the victors will decide to do away with the old League; but even if this happens, it will be necessary to create a new League under a new name. It is, however, entirely possible that the existing machinery Will be Utilized in order to create a new organization. Even though the white palace in Geneva is deserted, nothing can kill the spirit which created it. On the walls of the now deserted Assembly Hall the following opening sentences of
the Covenant can be read:
In order to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war, by the prescription of open, just and honorable relations between nations, by the firm establishment of the understandings of international law as the actual rule of conduct among governments, and by the maintenance of justice and a scrupulous respect for all treaty obligations in the dealings of organized peoples with one another, the High Contracting Parties agree to this Covenant of the League of Nations.
The principles of international morality are summed up in
these words, and the Nobel Prize winner. Lord Robert Cecil, was undoubtedly right when he recently said: “Whenever civilized nations seriously try to live together in peace, they will always have to accept the principles on which the League of Nations is founded. And, after all, is not the war waged by England the war which the League would order us to
wage against the aggressor . . . ?” These are the words
of a great champion of peace; and it may come to pass that the “embalmed” League will one day be revivified as a real
League of Nations, after a war which is waged on behalf of the League’s ideals, though not in the League’s name. Then perhaps there will be remembered an unpublished letter from Alfred Nobel, which, like so many other treasures, is
buried in the cellars of the League. This letter is dated 1893 and contains these words: “I fear, Madame, that I cannot identify the idea of peace with the idea of disarmament. I feel obliged to tell you that I believe on the contrary that
pacifist states should be armed so as to be able to conquer together any state which attacks another.”
For the present, Geneva is enveloped in the same blackout as the countries which had once belonged to the League.
Since “unknown” airplanes began to fly over Switzerland, deep darkness reigns at night in the city on the Lake Leman. Two kilometers away from the League Building at Ferney-
Voltaire is the frontier between Switzerland and Occupied France, watched by German soldiers. With rigid faces these
soldiers stare into the blackout which their Fuehrer has spread over Europe, engulfing the Palace of Peace.
