The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1919-01-20

Neutrals Object to Proposed
Exclusion From League of
Nations = Formal Protest
May be Made.
MUCH PROGRESS MADE
(By Associated Press)

PARIS, Jan. 20.-The situation in
Russia was taken Up by the supreme
council of the peace conference at its
session today. Joseph Noulens the
French ambassador to Russia was
present at the meeting and addressed
it on the Russian question.
This announcement was made in the
official statement given out regarding
the proceeding Of the plenipotentiar-
les
The next meeting of the council will
be held tomorrow at 1920 o'clock
Causes Dissatisfaction.
The decision that the league of ma
tions will be outlined and organized
by belligerents alone is understood to
be the cause of some dissatisfaction
among the neutrals who are already
informally discussing the matter
among themselves. Whether any in
formal action will be taken by the
neutrals to voice their protest, is not
yet known, but among some of them
there is said to be a feeling that it
would be neither fair nor dignified
that they be afterward asked to sub
scribe to a covenant in whose making
they had no part.
The neutrals it is understood, do
sion of peace terms because they took
part in the war. but they contend that
a league of nations is an international
institution Independent of the war
and therefore, no distinction should
be made between belligerents and non
belligerents
Ten members present, with Nittoria
Orlando, the Italian premier, the only
absentee, the supreme council of the
peace conference reassembled at 10: 80
o'clock this morning. Premier Orlando
had arrived here from Rome, how
ever, and was expected to attend the
councils session later in the day.
Arthur J. Balfour, the British for
eign secretary, was accompanied to
the meeting by Lord Robert Cecil, who
has especially in charge the subject
Of league of nations on behalf of
Great Britain. Baron Nobuaki MAXI
no, chief of the Japanese mission, at
tended the council for the first time,
representing Japan together with
Baron Natsui, the ambassador to
France.
Lord Robert Cecil remained at the
foreign office where the meeting was
held, for only a few moments and did
not enter the council chamber where
the session today was an executive
one. 1t is understood that an official
communique will be issued at the close
of the meeting at which it was ex-
pected that the exchange of informa-
ton between the governments on the
situation in Russia forecast in one of
last weeks communiQues would take
place.
The council as it met today COM
prised ten members-two from each of
the five great powers-President Will
son and Secretary of State Lansing
representing the United States. The
three additional members from each
power did not attend, as full meetings
of the membership of 25 are assembled
only when subjects of especial import
ance are under consideration by the
council.
League Plans Discussed.
AS the peace congress resumed sit
tings today, marked progress was be-
ing made in the business of compar-
ing various plans for the formation of
a league of nations and harmonizing
them into unity of ideas which can
be taken up as a concrete proposition.
Much headway in this direction was
made last night at the conference at
the Murat residence, which was at
tended by Mr.. Wilson, Lord Robert
Cecil. the British representative charg-
ed with working out of a plan for
league of nations; Leon Bourgeois.
the French proponent of a plan for
such an organization and General Jan
Christian Smuts, who has formulated
a plan for league.
Preliminary conversations over the
structure of the league of nations are,
strictly speaking, still in the stage of
being discussed in meetings of the
supreme council and are not technic-
ally before the peace congress as a
whole, but the fact that the congress
has advanced this question to the fore
most place in its program is taken to
indicate that such progress is being
made in the supreme council as to
warrant the expectation that a defi-
mite and somewhat detailed program
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