STEEL AND MORTAR

Evening Star, Issue 20958, 24 November 1931, Page 2

STEEL AND MORTAR

NEW BUILDING AT GENEVA HOUSING THE DISARMAMENT CONFERENCE It is significant that while rumotfrs of the postponement of tho Disarmament Conference are being assiduously disseminated from Pans, Geneva is going vigorously forward with imposing preparations for tho reception of the conference, says the Geneva correspondent of ‘Headway’ (official organ of tho British League of Nations Gnion). It will be remembered that when several other towns were competing for tho honour (and financial advantage) of giving the conference harbourage, tho Swiss authorities, botli local and federal, gave astonishingly lavish assurances of what they would do to provide every accommodation needed. They are certainly being as good as their word, as anyone wandering in the neighbourhood of the League Secretariat can see with half an eye. What he will see, in detail, is the construction of a spacious building at the east end of tho secretariat, where cranes are swinging great red girders into place, vast, deafening machines are grinding mortar, gaunt skeletons of steelwork are rising daily higher into heaven. But someone who knows the League Secretariat will point out that there is a public road at the east end of the secretariat. Quite true. There is. Or, rather was. for a little thing like a public road is not going to stand in the way of the Disarmament Conference preparations. Tho steel skeleton has simply straddled across tho road and clamped itself defiantly to the secretariat walls. The people who used to use that particular road arc having another road made for them through someone’s park. And the trams that used to run there? They are still running somewhere, but they are not running down that road, because there is no longer a road to run down. The real homo of the conference is being erected in the most convenient spot of all, facing the lake, and directly adjoining and communicating with the secretariat. Whether it will bo an ornamental building is a little open to doubt. The necessity of making speed of construction the main consideration must have limited the architect a good deal. But it will certainly bo a very serviceable building, as a few particulars regarding its accommodation will show.' On the lower ground floor, apart from entrance halls, there will bo post and telegraph offices, a newspaper kiosk, kitchen, and twenty-six commodious offices. On the upper ground floor will bo a spacious looby, providing ample accommodation for those casual encounters and conversations that form so essential a feature of Genova life, a largo Press room (nowhere are journalists looked after so well as at Geneva), two large committee rooms, forty-four telephone boxes, committee rooms, uud various offices for the president of the conference, the chairman of commissions, and others. All this, it may be pointed out, is costing the League of Nations nothing. The new building is being put up by the Swiss authorities to make it certain that tho conference shall bo held in Geneva and nowhere else. And when tho conference is over, what becomes of the building? For a time, no doubt, it will bo used by the secretariat, which is all the time overflowing into adjacent villas and fiats. But when the now permanent buildings of tho League arc finished (they are slowly taking shape on the Arian site more than a mile away from the construction here described), tho building now rising will have to have its permanent fate decided. Probably enough, when that time comes the present secretariat will revert to its old role and become an hotel once again. In that case the disarmament building may well bo incorporated in it, for though the result will be a hostelry of enormous size it will, with one exception, be the only hotel anywhere near tho League’s now home, and consequently the run ou its accommodation will be heavy. In other directions Geneva is exerting itself with equal vigour. It has fixed hotel prices in advance, and claims to have ample and suitable accommodation available for the 2,400 participants, including delegates, experts, and journalists, whose presence is looked for, together with as many of the general public as are likely to frequent the purlieus of the conference. Geneva, being clean as well as godly, takes pleasure in announcing that 3,500 rooms,, all with running water, will bo at tho disposal of the guests. Judging from the experience of the past, there will bo some delegates to whom diligent recourse to the facilities thus furnished might be recommended.