AT GENEVA AGAIN

Southland Times, Issue 22999, 19 September 1936, Page 7

AT GENEVA AGAIN

League Meeting e

COMPOSITION IN MELTING-POT

Prominent Figures

Absent

(United Press Assn.—Telegraph Copyright.) (Rec. 11.40 p.m.) London, September 18. A large number of diplomatists have already assembled at Geneva for the League Council meeting this afternoon—the first to be held in the new building, which cost £1,000,000. Two of the most prominent figures of former meetings of the League of Nations will be missing. Senor Madariaga (Spain), who was chairman of the Committee of Thirteen, is absent on account of the Spanish civil war, and M. Nicolae Titulescu has been dropped from the Rumanian Cabinet in which he was Foreign Minister, and is at present seriously ill at St. Moritz (Switzerland) —an occasion for groundless rumours that he had been poisoned. M. Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet Foreign Commissar, travelled through Warsaw and Vienna to avoid crossing German territory.

The Spanish Foreign Minister has arrived at Marseilles in his way to Geneva. He flew from Madrid in a Government aeroplane, which has several bullet-holes in its wings.

Last-Minute Move.

The Geneva correspondent of The Times says that the very composition of the League Council is in the melt-ing-pot. There has long been deep dissatisfaction with the system of peiinanently excluding certain ungrouped Powers from representation on the Council, and the creation of an extra, non-permanent seat is not regarded as going sufficiently far. The Geneva correspondent of The Manchester Guardian says that there has been much comment about a mys-

terious, last-minute addition to the agenda of the League of the question of prohibiting, under the provisions of the Covenant, the supply of arms and war material to belligerents. Everyone is asking why the question has been suddenly taken up after two years of inaction, and at whose instance it was raized. Haile Selassie’s solicitors have sent a telegraph message to the League Court stating that they are authorized to apply for the convening of an extraordinary session to hear the case of Ethiopia in the matter of a breach of international law by Italy.