The League at Work

...It is now clear that the old system has passed away beyond recall...

...On the contrary, the new system will bring with it dangers of its own, of which there is certain to be evidence enough in the coming twelve months...

...If it did, its numbers would have to be greatly increased and not one but a row of hotels, comparable to the bureaucratic piles of London, Washington, and other capitals would house the staff of what would then be in reality a superstate...

...but so soon as the connection between the applied art and the parent art, between politics and ethics is lost, there must of necessity be confusion and corruption...

...Where first class issues are involved, the subjects threshed out in technical committees are referred to a full-dress international conference with a treaty or convention as the final aim...

...What is the League of Nations today...

...And the League, more than any other political organization, needs the constant discipline of a common morale and the constant inspiration of an ideal...

...The secretariat is not a bureaucracy but an agency for making and maintaining international contacts...

...Thus the discussions on the traffic in arms led to the conference on this subject last spring, at which the United States was represented...

...The second had vaguely imagined that it was a standing exhibition of high dramatics and was correspondingly depressed at seeing the concrete business-like reality...

...Its only connection with religion and ethics is that, in the nature of things, politics must be applied religion and applied morality...

...It is only an office...

...But in fact, during the first period of its activity, the League has been chiefly and essentially an office...

...The world was surprised last October by the smoothness with which the machinery of the League was set in action to prevent a war in the Balkans...

...No mere institution can reform international morality...

...The League of Nations is not a complete answer to that query...

...I did not know they kept a clerk there...

...The creation of this atmosphere is undoubtedly due to the secretariat...

...The question of method in the larger realm of human affairs is a problem of religious and social organization for which Catholics have their own answer...

...This body of some three hundred permanent workers or clerks, as the good lady would call them, is not, strictly speaking, an international civil service...

...By developing a technique of cooperation between sovereign governments...

...It has reduced the foreign offices to the position of being only one of the many official agencies through which sovereign governments Jo business wim on 6 aAotne*!1...

...Round the small staff of its various sections revolves a whole host of more technical and specialized bodies...

...For seven years it has been doubtful whether the old European system of balance of power would be revived in the form of a division between the two sides in the great war, or whether the cooperative organism devised to supersede that system would prove strong enough to accomplish its task...

...it was merely the working of what has already become a routine...

...This is not the place in which to enumerate the long list of practical measures which have resulted from this work...

...When I told her that I was bound for the League of Nations at Geneva, she replied with astonishment—"Is it really open the year round...

...it is simply a political body, in the technical sense of that word...

...but these consist for the most part not of League officials but of outside experts, sometimes officials of national governments, sometimes representatives of other bodies, sometimes private individuals, but all key men in their respective spheres of activity...

...It is a centre for the working out and dissemination of ideas and plans...

...The League of Nations is neither a religious body nor an ethical body...

...The entry of Germany into the League of Nations with a permanent seat on the Council will bring with it not only new moral relationship but also new diplomatic methods...

...But it does mean that the whole influence of the league system, the influence of the habit of cooperation and mutual understanding developed by the work of the last six years will be thrown into the scales on the side of reasonableness, good will and constructive adjustment...

...Ratification is seldom rapid, except on a first class issue such as the Locarno agreements...

...Peace on earth to men of good will," was proclaimed nearly two thousand years ago...

...It is this new system of cooperation which has grown up at Geneva during the last six years which is the most far-reaching contribution made as yet by the League to the peace of the world...

...I have purposely dwelt rather on the routine work of the League than on its more ambitious projects: for it is only in virtue of the technique and the good will developed in the day by day conduct of routine business that the more ambitious tasks have become possible...

...It does no direct administration...

...But it WaS ttftt a miracle...

...it is inevitable...

...Then follows the long and laborious task of securing ratifications...

...KeTAM ulfl war, the foreign offices carried almost the entire burden—today the League machinery of consultation, and conference has brought departments of health, of Commerce) of transport and others into the international arena...

...That does not mean that all will be harmony...

...Thus the number of those who give part service to the League is very much greater than the number of whole-time League officials, and hardly a week passes at Geneva without the meeting of some technical committee whose work radiates to the most various spheres of civilized activity...

...For the student of political science, as for the detached observer of the international scene, the coming years will be full of the interest which always attaches to the practical development of an idea which has acquired the decisive momentum of concrete success...

...The result was a series of documents signed by the majority of the delegates at the closing session...

...Few realized that behind the punctual clock-work of the Council there was a habit of association and mutual confidence which made it impossible for the germs Of distrust, SO potent hitherto in international crises, to find a lodgment...

...The first lady did not know that it had an office and had therefore concluded that it was nothing but idle talk...

...It is this which has produced that "Geneva atmosphere," so potent yet so impalpable, which delegates to the Assembly, the Council and the technical conferences carry back to their cabinets and government departments...

...Since the matters with which these departments are concerned are in their nature generally less contentious than those which come to foreign offices proper, the result has been to extend contacts in a field where cooperation has often been both pleasant and easy...

...What is this organization which is just concluding its period of apprenticeship and preparing to face larger tasks...

...1 he new system UHae1!1 which peoples benefit from the operation of gcnsral rules of cooperation such as are customary in the smaller units of society, is not only sound and sensible...

...The applications are technical and, as in every art of science, often difficult to discover...

...for to extract signatures from some fifty governments, each of which has to consult experts ensconced in offices remote from international influences is as difficult a procedure as can be imagined...

...Its great achievement has been to have institutionalized an aspiration...

...but at least it can be said for the League system that it has made cooperation between sovereign states a possible method of doing business in a world which will inevitably need more and more general rules for the regulation of its common life...

...Henceforward the League of Nations, and, in particular, its council will be the centre of diplomatic activity...

...When the Bulgarian peasants saw their villages being evacuated as the result of ten gentlemen meeting round a table in Paris, they must have regarded it almost as a miracle...

...The broad result of this method has been to stimulate and hasten a change in the character of intergovernmental relationship of which the first signs were already visible before the war...

...Last spring when I crossed the Atlantic going eastward a conscientious fellow-traveler, who had prepared herself to see the sights of Europe, enquired as to my destination...

...Men have assented to the ideal, but have always asked themselves "how...

...Henceforward controversy will rage not about the principle of international political organization but about tkis or that metnod ana detail...

...A few days after reaching Geneva, I overheard a lady emerging from the secretariat remark to a friend who had awaited her outside—"There is nothing whatever to see there...

...Before the war this presented almost insuperable difficulties...

...These two anecdotes which have the merit of being true, illustrate two popular misconceptions about the League...

...Today the matters to be ratified are already familiar to the experts when the document arrives...

...How has the League institutionalized peace...

...And public opinion throughout the countries represented in the League is becoming accustomed to the thought that it is the old system of anarchy, selfishness and competition which Is abnormal and unnatural...

...It does not even mean that there cannot be attempts to revive the system of balance and competition inside the League itself...