A WORLD CENTRE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20450, 3 July 1928, Page 13

A WORLD CENTRE.

WORK AT GENEVA. PEACE, INDUSTRY, AND ECONOMICS. SCOPE OF ORGANISATION. Purine a recent visit to Geneva. Mr George Shirtcliffe, of Wellington, had the opportunity of meeting and talking with the Secretary-general (Sir Eric Drummond) and other responsible officers of the League of Nations. He was greatly impressed with the magnitude and importance of the work undertaken by the League, and the efficiency of its organisation. Writing to a friend in Wellington (says the' Evening Post), he gives some account of the League’s achievements hitherto, and the method of its operation through its five principal factors; the Assembly, the Council, the. Secretariat, the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague, and the International Labour Organisation. “On its political side (he writes) the League has been called upon to deal with a variety of questions which arose as a consequence of the war, and threatened_ to a creator or less extent, the peace of the world. There was a dispute between Finland and Sweden regarding the Aaland Islands, the Polish-Lithuanian frontier dispute, the partition of Unper Silesia, border troubles in Rumania, the dispute between Austria and Hungary in the Burgenland, the Javorzaine frontier dispute between Poland and Czecho-Slo-vakia, the question of nationality decrees in Tunis and Morocco, the Corfu incident. Memel, the Anglo-Turkish dispute in regard to the frontier of Iraq, the Optants’ dispute between Rumania and Hungary, the Hungarian machine-gun incident, and also the Graeco-Bulgarian dispute, in which in less than three days the Council obtained the cessation of hostilities and the evacuation of the occupied territory. In addition, the peace treaties have made the League responsible for the administration of the Saar territory, the Free City of Danzig is placed under its guarantee, it supervises the execution of treaties relating to minorities, and it supervises the administration by the mandatory Powers of 15 territories, formerly German or Turkish, which have been placed under mandate. SEEKING DURABLE PEACE. “The League seeks further to • establish durable peace by the organisation of a system of arbitration, and to create conditions of security. For instance, there was the Geneva Protocol proposing universal arbitration, which, though not, adopted, formed the basis of the Locarno and various other agreements. The Preparatory Disc.mament _ Commission has exhaustively considered the technical aspect of disarmament, and s commission has recently been set up to consider the questions of arbitration and security, so as to find \ basis for the requisite security to enable the work of disarmament to be carried on. COLLABORATION IN MANY PHASES. “The Economic and Financial Organisation, the Organisation for Communications and Transit, the Hpalth Organisation, the International Committee on Intellectual Co-operation, and the Committee for the. Progressive Codification of International Law, have all been established with the object of ensuring close collaboration between the various countries in these respective spheres. Conferences have been convened by the League in order to elucidate and lay down the necessary principles. The financial ruin of. Austria was averted, after the previous attempts of various States had failed with a resultant -loss of approximately £75,000,000. The League of Nations issued a loan guaranteed by several; countries, and in a few months the Austrian currency was stabilised, and budgetary equilibrium re-established, under the control of a League Commissioner., The same method was applied to the case of Hungary, Greece, Esthonia, Bulgaria, etc., and similar results were achieved. WORK FOR HUMANITY. “ The humanitarian work of the League has resulted in the repatriation of more than 400,000 prisoners of war, the assist-, qrice of millions of refugees, Russian. Greek, and Armenian, the systematisation of the campaign against the traffic in opium, and the traffic in women, protection of children, suppression of the traffic in obscene publications, combined efforts with a view to the suppression of slavery, elaboration s of draft statutes for international relief for the assistance of peoples overtaken by disaster, etc. “ The League’s strength has become increased through the' membership of Germany, and through the close co-operation of the United States, which has taken part in nearly all its activities. The Union of Soviet Republics,’ which formerly- took every opportunity of decrying the League, has now been represented at the Economic Conference and the Preparatory Disarmament Commission. Turkey also-has been recently represented at Geneva. INTERNATIONAL SECRETARIAT. “As in the case of civil administration, the Secretariat is advisory, as well as executive, with one great difference, namely, that the ■ Secretariat is international. The work that this means can easily he realised. For instance, during the first three monhs of 1927, 645 documents were distributed, representing roughly I65;000 copies, 76,000 in French, and 51,000 in English, while 38,000 were bilingual. This calls for highly specialised technical knowledge, since it is useless to translate a technical speech into another language unless the interpreter has at his fingers’ ends the corresponding technical jargon. A vary large part of the League’s work is now technical, and one may imagine the requirements of a verbal interpreter to a committee, including Professor Lorenz, Professor Ein- , stein, and M. Painleve in an informal debate on their own abstruse subject. The Secretary-general of the League is English, the Deputy Secretary-general a Frenchman. There are three Under-secre-taries-general, and six or seven directors or section chiefs of various nationalities. The total personnel is about 500, and 30 or 40 nationalities are represented. The principle that the Secretariat should be international is strictly maintained. There is a division between the senior and subordinate branches, and the members of the upper division are themselves divided into two grades. Those of the first are the men one would expect to find in the'higher division of the civil service in any country, for the most part with honours degrees, and some of them experts of international reputation in their particular subjects. FRANKNESS AND PUBLICITY. “An onlooker is struck with the extraordinary high standards both in ability and duty which characterises the Secretariat. Quite apart from the Assembly and'Council meetings, there is now hardly a week in the year in which some committee of experts from the four corners of the earth does not descend on Geneva to discuss some abstruse subject. Some can speak no language but their own. The work of preparing these meetings is, therefore, extremely onerous, ■ and they also have to be minuted, and the speeches verbally interpreted. “ Something. like 1500 treaties in many different languages have been registered with the Secretariat. These have 'been translated into the two official languages —English and French—and have been published with the object of imbuing international relations with a spirit of frankness. “ The question of the press at Geneva is also of considerable importance. Formerly Ministers could hurl ultimata at each other by telegraph from their own offices, but it is a different matter to state a case before the Council or Assembly of the League, and before about 400 journalists. representing the press o! the entire world. There are about 100 journalists permanently stationed at Geneva, requiring daily service from the Secretariat. “In the words of Lord Cecil, it’may be safely said- that the League has improved international intercourse, it has struck effective blows at grave social evils, it has rescued some hundreds of thousands of men, women, and/children from cap* tivity and starvation, it haa done some* thing to restore the economic situation in Europe, it has rescued States floundering in a financial morass, it has. procured the settlement of a certain number of international disputes, in* one or two cases has prevented what seemed to be imminent hostilities,'' _